I’ve been told by someone who doesn’t like my Times Higher Educational Supplement piece about lettori (see below) that my blog is ‘self-serving’. I’ve no doubt he also has strong opinions about the religious identity of the pope and where bears defecate.
Still, a hit’s a hit!
Mara Carfagna is Minister for Equal Opportunities in Berlusconi’s new cabinet. This poster comes from an earlier incarnation as calendar fodder and, oddly, wasn’t used to promote her campaign during the recent elections. Possibly because Italian voters aren’t actually allowed to choose their representatives, but only the party to which they belong. In the lovely Mara’s case, the Popolo delle Libertà, otherwise known as Poppe al Vento (Boobs to the Wind). I wonder what Gianni Alemanno, Rome’s new mayor, thinks about this sort of exhibitionism.
Carfagna announced last year that gay unions shouldn’t be recognised because ‘homosexuals are constitutionally sterile.’ No one is quite sure what this means, but it certainly feels offensive.
My sister normally reads these posts from work, but she had a surprise last week. The server her workplace uses wouldn’t let her open the blog. When she told me about it a couple of days ago I thought she was going to say it had been blocked for obscenity (read: Berlusconi’s todger). But I was wrong. My crime, which renders me unreadable for a large public organization in London, is profanity. I may express the occasional doubt about the role of various churches in issues that don’t concern them, but profane? Surely that’s rather harsh. I also wonder how they know. They obviously have much more sensitive filters than those used by GoogleAds, which also picks up on the religious content of the blog, but seems to think my readers are either devout catholics (which may sometimes be the case) or waiting for the Rapture (which I devoutly hope, isn’t.)
And if you’re wondering why I’ve been inactive these past few days, let me show you a sample of the 40-page text I’m supposed to be editing for a certain unnamed international agency:
“The farmers organization without the money”, that falls the farmers are to be an only the beneficiary of the grant aid, that is free of charge, by the government and/or donors with passiveness, no ideas against the trouble shooting, and they are just like only being gathering group. How extent of the grant aid could help the poor farmer’s hope? When considering the disturbance of the “free of charge” programme which being spoiled the farmer’s self-help efforts, it was really necessary to discover the right direction for the International Cooperation that will not be a “free of charge”.
As Sophie Tucker once said about a TV healer: “Honey, he can heal the sick, but he can’t raise the dead.”
This week’s Times Higher Education Supplement has a leader on the appalling treatment meted out to foreign language teachers by Italian universities. I wrote it. Here’s a taste:
I became a lettore in 1982, in Rome. The building I worked in was a box of concrete and rattling glass that would soon be declared unfit for purpose and abandoned. My first class, for beginners, had almost 100 students and was held in a room the shape of a boot. Standing at the toe, I watched what I taught being relayed to the hidden third of the class beyond the heel. Students would turn up hours before class began for a seat within sight and hearing of me. It didn’t surprise me that only 10 per cent of Italian students graduated.
I didn’t have space to describe the room we were given in the place to which the faculty was moved a few years later. The building had been a private clinic of some sort. There was a padded cell on the third floor and in some ways I’m surprised we weren’t told to store our books and receive students in that. But someone had a better idea. The morgue. Perhaps it was felt that the chilly atmosphere would help us to preserve our linguistic freshness. (You’ll need to read the piece to understand this reference, and the title. And if you’d like to leave a comment, I’d be delighted.)
Gianni Alemanno, Rome’s new mayor, as far as I know unasked, has announced that the city will not be supporting Gay Pride 2008 (yes, it’s that time of year again), on the grounds that he doesn’t approve of sexual displays of any kind, heterosexual or homosexual. This is the standard line now, and really means nothing at all, unless of course he’s also going to suggest that Alessandra Mussolini, or Daniala Santanché or any of the other belles du jour of the right, button up their blouses and climb down off their vertiginously high heels, which have the effect, as high heels are designed to have, of emphasising their buttocks and calves, admittedly secondary sexual characteristics, but nonetheless on display. It isn’t clear though whether this mayoral disapproval is going to express itself as laissez faire disdain or take the more concrete form of a ban. That would be foolish, and unpopular abroad (as if Alemanno cared). It might be the most practical thing to have us all herded into some suitable public space. A stadium, say. Or one of the gipsy camps about to be emptied of their current inhabitants. Or why not simply put us all in the same place – gipsies and gays together? It won’t be the first time, after all. It’s actually rather practical. Gipsies are dirty and horribly untidy, while gays love nothing more than rearranging the furniture and ironing doilies. It’s a holocaust made in heaven.
Some Forza Italia token gay, god love him, suggests that we should do the march in suits and ties. This reminds me of the time I saw a member of the gay commune Bethnal Rouge – oh heady days! – in unusually sober attire. ‘I’m wearing man drag,’ he confided. ‘I’ve got to go to the job centre.’ On the other hand, Rome is worth a waistcoat…
(It’s worth remembering, of course, that Rutelli, the PD candidate for mayor, also withdrew support for Gay Pride on similar grounds. You see how fair I am?)
PS No-neh is the noise Roman matrons make when denying children some small pleasure; it’s accompanied by a wagging finger.
There’s an error in the previous post. Where I say ‘adoring’ I meant to say ‘adorning’. I could have just corrected it but why waste a layer of meaning, albeit unintentional? As long as the ports have names for the sea…
Not to speak of the wonderful pain/paint slip-up from Lion Lion (Tom Raworth).
PS I’ve also just realised how ambiguous my final sentence is in the post below. I’ll be thinking about this and getting back to you with some kind of clarification. Or not. Why waste a layer of meaning?
PPS I’m quoting myself. I’m very tired. I’ll tell you why tomorrow. To prepare you for what’s coming, I’ll whisper the word ‘train’. And that reminds me of perhaps the worst printing error I’ve ever come across. If you haven’t read Anna Karenina, there’s a spoiler coming up. (On the other hand, if you haven’t read Anna Karenina, you deserve a spoiler.) At the end of the novel, in the edition I read some decades ago, Anna commits suicide by throwing herself under a ‘good strain’. What a misplaced ‘s’ can do.
PPPS And given that tiredness encourages this process of random association, I’m reminded of a comment made by Julian Bees from the ANSA English desk some years back, when told that human beings and chimpanzees share 90-whatever percent of their genes: ‘Genetics isn’t maths. It’s spelling. You change a letter, you change the word.’
The news that Rome Film Festival will be concentrating its efforts on promoting Italian cinema rather than the careers of foreign actors would probably have been greeted with greater enthusiasm if it had come from a liberal mayor. The fact that the decision has been made by Alemanno has led to a rather more – how shall I put this – strident, even hysterical, reaction. Particularly outside Italy, where The Times of Rupert Murdoch, in pot-to-kettle fashion, refers to the new mayor as il Duce. That’s as may be. Though it’s odd that the spots of hard left leopards seem to wash off with no trouble at all, aided perhaps by a gentle shower of clerical rain, while those adoring the hard right are considered to be as permanent and indelible as Indian ink.
Personally, I’d be happy to see a little more attention being given to an industry that still manages to produce worthwhile cinema – Crialese, Moretti, Soldini, to cite three very different directors – despite the massive attention given by the media and distributors to foreign (read, US) movies. Maybe a little autochthony will do us all good. It will also be refreshing to see less of Walter Veltroni fawning over Hollywood starlets as though they were envoys from the planet Beautiful.
Is this the beginning of the backlash?
Ouch! I’ve been tagged, twice (and I’ll be getting to yours, Simon, but you’ll have to admit that this one is, well, less demanding). This post is a response to Elizabeth Baines’ tag from a few days ago. These are the instructions:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
It’s slightly embarrassing because the nearest book to my computer just happens to be my own novel. Believe me when I say that this is less a measure of my self-obsession than of a general state of disorder. Most books in my study are piled on the table behind me. Little Monsters, for some reason I can’t remember now, just happens to be lying beneath a pile of FAO reports I’m trying to work on. So:
The Turks who need help are standing near the window: a young couple with a girl, three or four years old, who clings to her father, pulling his jacket, too large for him, off his shoulder. they look hot: they are wearing far too many clothes for this time of year – it’s still humid out and has barely begun to cool towards autumn. When Flavio gestures to him, the man speaks, in broken English, while the woman and child step back, and listen.
However, as maybe my own book doesn’t really count, I’ll reach a little further and take the second nearest as well. And it’s Words from a Glass Bubble by Vanessa Gebbie, which I still haven’t started reading, and am looking forward to very much. So, I open it at page 123 and what do I find?
I wanted to leave you, she said. So many times.
Bren looked at him in their kitchen and named them; the men she would have left him for.
That ought to whet your appetite; it’s certainly whetted mine. Unfortunately, I can’t tag Vanessa, because Elizabeth already has, so here are my five:
Go for it!
CHARLES LAMBERT 