>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
to the Library of Congress
and to this event -- a conversation
about the novel "Un paese di carta".
I am Grant Harris, I'm head of
the European Reading Room here
at the Library of Congress -- not
in this building, the Madison,
but in the Jefferson
across the street.
The library is very pleased
to sponsor this event today,
and we do so in partnership with the
library's Italian Language Table,
and more importantly,
with the Italian Embassy,
the Italian Cultural Institute,
and especially with the author,
Dr. Laura Benedetti, from
Georgetown University,
and reporter Emily Langer
of the "Washington Post".
The novel we will discuss today
has many interesting facets,
but let me add one to that.
The novel refers to an area in
Central Italy called Abruzzo,
which neighbors the area struck
by the earthquake just a week ago.
Abruzzo, and in particular,
its major city, L'Aquila,
from which Dr. Benedetti hails,
was hit by an equally
devastating earthquake in 2009.
The Library of Congress is proud
of its Italian collections,
possibly the largest such
collections outside of Italy.
Lucia Wolfe, sitting in the front
row, is our specialist for Italy.
And if you want to research
nearly any aspect of Italy,
please come back and
talk to Lucia any time.
In just a minute, I will have
Lucia introduce today's speakers.
I'll hold the floor for
just another minute here.
Let me say that we hope you
enjoy the discussion today
and that you will come back
to use our collections.
Again, I thank all who have
made this event possible.
I would now invite to the podium
the library's Italian specialist,
Lucia Wolfe.
>> It looks like I'm going
to have to do something here.
Can you hear me?
>> Mm-hmm.
>> OK. So I am Lucia Wolfe and
I'm the reference librarian
for the Italian collections
at the European division.
Today's event is a very
special occasion --
the presentation of Dr. Laura
Benedetti's first novel,
"Un paese di carta".
I will leave it to her to
translate the title in English.
I had something approximately
-- a country of paper --
but it could be a town of paper too.
But to an American audience,
the most important thing
for me is the promotion of
Italian culture and language
through our vast Italian collections
at the Library of Congress,
which I am very proud to say
is close to 400,000 items.
Although it is impossible to
come up with an exact count.
The promotion of the
Italian collections is one
of the most important and
exciting parts of my profession
because it allows for the
connection between the collections
and the communities
that the library serves.
As Grant mentioned, the Library of
Congress is one of the few libraries
in the world with the largest number
of Italian items in its collections.
These hundreds of thousands of items
are spread across all divisions
and come in all formats: prints
and photographs, music scores,
manuscripts, maps, sound
recordings, motion pictures,
in addition to the large number
of printed books and periodicals.
Dr. Benedetti's novel, the
subject of our presentation today,
is one of the many books written
by interesting contemporary Italian
authors in our general collections.
And for the Americans
in our audience,
I might add that many
English translations
of Italian authors are also
present in our vast collections.
The Italian holdings at the
Library of Congress increase
by the thousands every
year with new items
from Italy's current
publishing scene,
of which Dr. Benedetti's
novel is one.
Personally, I can attest to
this because I have the honor
to be the person who selects
and recommends the new
acquisitions from Italy.
Thank you all for allowing me this
short promotion of the Library
of Congress' collections to elicit
your interest and patronage.
Now to our guest speaker.
Dr. Laura Benedetti holds a laude
summa cum laude from the University
of Rome-La Sapienza, a master's
from the University of Alberta,
and Ph.D. from Johns
Hopkins University.
She taught for eight
years at Harvard
where she was the John
Loeb Associate Professor
for the Humanities before
joining Georgetown in 2002.
Her publications include
"La sconfitta di Diana.
Un percorso per la Gerusalemme
liberata", "The Tigress in the Snow:
Motherhood and Literature in
20th-Century Italy", the addition
and translation of one of
Italy's earliest women writers,
Lucrezia Marinella, "Esortazioni
alle donne e agli altri",
and most recently,
"Un paese di carta".
Incidentally, all of these
books by Dr. Benedetti are
in the library's collections.
She has been the guest of
honor at annual meetings
of the American Association
of Italian Studies as well
as the recipient of various awards:
the Flaiano International Prize
for Italian Studies, the Wise Woman
Award from the National Organization
of Italian-American
Women, and the gold medal
from the Federazione Associazioni
Abruzzesi U.S.A. She is currently
associate editor and book review
editor of Italian Culture:
The Journal of the American
Association of Italian Studies.
Our next guest speaker is Emily
Langer, a reporter with the
"Washington Post" where she works
on the obituaries desk and says
about her work, "Every day I
have the opportunity to delve
into a different life:
a writer, a scientist,
an artist, a doctor, and so on."
She also writes occasionally
feature stories
for the newspaper including
two articles about a pair
of Italian sisters who survived
the Holocaust as very young girls.
Finally, she is a graduate
of the Italian Department
at Georgetown University.
And in 2010-2011 was a Fulbright
fellow in Trieste, Italy.
And now, I will leave
you to our presentation.
Thank you all.
[ Applause ]
So thank you so much, all
of you, for being here.
Thank you to Lucia and
to Grant for having us.
But most of all, thank you, Laura,
for writing this magnificent book.
I was Laura's student 14 years ago
at the Italian Department
of Georgetown.
And it was my first day at
Georgetown and her first day
at Georgetown, and I stumbled into
her class about the Italian writer,
Italo Calvino, who by the
way, figures in this novel,
and I've been hanging
around ever since.
So I'm very glad to be
here with her today.
So as Grant said, Laura
is from L'Aquila,
which you probably remember was hit
by a terrible earthquake in 2009.
And I wanted to ask you
first, given what you know
about L'Aquila's experience,
what does Amatrice face
in the next number
of years recovering
from the earthquake last week?
>> Well, first of all, L'Aquila
is only 30 miles from Amatrice,
so the quake brought back
some very sad memories
and also created some new
damage in L'Aquila as well.
As far as Amatrice is concerned,
of course there the devastation
is terrible, but I hear,
there's strong determination
from the people
of Amatrice to rebuild their town.
And now I also hear
from the government
that the model was
followed for L'Aquila,
so the idea of closing off the
town and building somewhere else,
is not a model to be
followed in this case.
And this is very reassuring to
me, so I hope that in a way,
the experience -- the
tragic experience
of the L'Aquila earthquake will
help the people in Amatrice
to rebuild faster and better homes.
And incidentally, Amatrice was part
of L'Aquila territory until 1927.
There is a very powerful link
between the two communities.
And in fact, I just read in the
paper today that several families
from Amatrice just arrived in
L'Aquila and will be housed
in the houses that were built
after the earthquake in L'Aquila.
So there is a very strong link
between the two communities.
>> What is the situation in
L'Aquila today, six years --
seven years after the earthquake?
>> Well, in the past two
years let's say, since 2014,
things have really changed.
And the rebuilding of the town has
had a very powerful acceleration.
So actually, I'm cautiously
optimistic about the --
-- of the town.
There are several question
marks, especially in terms
of what the population
is going to do,
because many people have
left L'Aquila, many people,
especially after what happened
in Amatrice, don't feel safe
in the center of town, so there are
still many issues to be discussed
and many problems to be solved.
But I'm cautiously optimistic.
>> I was talking to a friend
after the earthquake last week,
and what he said was that
in the United States,
we tend to think Italy for its
beauty and for its history,
and that what these earthquakes
have exposed is also its fragility.
And I wanted to ask you about the
title of your novel, as they said,
"Un paese di carta",
which relates to this,
what did you mean with your title?
>> First of all, thank
you, Lucia, and thank you,
Grant, and thank you, Emily.
This is [inaudible].
Thank you all for being here.
But it's very interesting that Lucia
immediately brought up the issue
of the title, because the title is
very hard to translate into English.
And it turned out to
be more ambiguous
than I thought even in Italian.
In my mind -- in the
mind of the artist --
the title meant Italy
as a cultural --
and especially literary
construction --
as opposed to Italy as a
political and physical entity.
So in other words, one of the
protagonists of the novel is a woman
who left Italy at the end of the
50s and has the rest of her life
in the United States, but has a kept
very strong relationship with Italy.
But Italy -- the Italy that she
loves is un paese di carta --
it's a country made of paper in
the sense that it lives in books --
lives in its cultural artifacts.
It's not Italy as a
political entity.
There is only one passage
in the novel
where this expression is mentioned,
and it is precisely when Alice --
so the oldest of the three women --
the novel is about three
women, the oldest one is Alice.
And Alice is writing a letter to
her fiancé in Italy explaining
that she'll never go back.
And she says, "But
that does not matter
because I will always
inhabit the Italy I love --
a country made of paper."
But when I presented the
book, because I had the chance
to present the book all over
during the past year from Naples
to Venice and Turin, you know.
And when I presented it in
L'Aquila, especially I presented it
in several schools in L'Aquila,
and when I asked about the meaning
of the title, the answer I got
the most often was it's a fragile
country, it's a vulnerable
country, it's a country
that seems very solid, but
could collapse at any minute.
And I think there is really an
interference of the experience
of the earthquake which
taught us that -- fragility.
But it's very interesting
to me that now
for the first time yesterday
actually, when we posted something
on Facebook, I also -- since this is
the first presentation of the novel
in English -- so I commented on
Emily's post and I said, "Yes,
this is the first presentation
in English which brings
up the issue how to
translate the title."
And actually, somebody
answered in private,
because we're mostly Italians
answer, and one of them said,
"You know, forget about un paese
di carta altogether and focus
on something like she's
back -- she's back home."
And so I was thinking
that going home,
although it's completely different,
couldn't be a possible title.
But anyway, the title is -- yeah,
it was central in my way of thinking
about the book when
I started writing it,
so it's a challenging title.
>> So you mentioned that the
book is about three women.
So Alice is the oldest, then
Alice's daughter is Jane,
and Jane's daughter is Sarah.
So Sarah is Alice's granddaughter.
And three generations of
women over more than 50 years
from World War II all the
way up until the aftermath
of the earthquake in L'Aquila.
So the first character
we meet is Sarah.
Tell us about Sarah.
>> Yeah. It's hard
to talk about Sarah
without talking about the other two.
So the oldest one is the only
one who has a clear birthdate
and also a death date
in the novel, is Alice.
Alice was born in 1930 in L'Aquila
and dies in Bethesda in 2010.
She left Italy in 1957 and
she had a daughter, Jane.
Jane in turn had three children, but
especially had this one daughter,
Sarah, who is 18 when
the novel begins in 2010.
She's multilingual, very bright,
very sensitive, and little bit
of a mess when the novel begins.
So the novel, in a way, is
also the [inaudible] of Sarah,
so it's a novel of formation.
A young protagonist manages
to overcome the challenges
on her path and enter adulthood.
To a certain extent, because
I'm a little skeptical
about drastic resolutions, but the
Sarah, at the end of the novel,
is much stronger than the
Sarah we meet at the beginning.
One more thing about Sarah, Sarah
was born when her mother, Jane,
thought she had enough of
raising children and was ready
to start her career as a lawyer.
So Jane even considered
having an abortion.
In the end, she did
have this child, Sarah,
but had been the grandmother,
Alice, to raise Sarah.
Which means that Sarah,
to her grandmother,
also lived in un paese di carta.
She had lived in this kind
of an abstract entity
that was Italy for her.
And when she finally goes to
Italy, she's faced with the reality
that is very different
from her expectations.
>> And the reason that Sarah goes
to Italy is because Alice has died.
This happens relatively
early in the novel,
so we're not giving away too much.
>> It's not a spoiler.
Yeah.
[ Laughter ]
>> But Sarah volunteers to take
her grandmother's ashes back
to L'Aquila, which is
what Alice had requested.
So tell us about Alice.
>> Yes. Alice -- I think one of
the things that I like the most
in the novel, or at
least one of the things
that I had the more fun writing,
is the scene of the will,
when the family -- after a lively
Thanksgiving dinner, the family gets
to read Alice's last wishes,
and one of them is the fact
that she wants her
ashes to be scattered
in her hometown -- in L'Aquila.
And nobody really wants to
do that, it's expensive,
it's time-consuming and all of that.
And Sarah, who is only 18,
says, "Well, I'm going to do it.
I'll go." And so she goes
to L'Aquila, and of course,
she realizes that does not know
before going, but she realizes
as soon as she steps in L'Aquila
that she's in a disaster zone.
So in this way, Sarah's path
crosses the whole problematic
of the earthquake.
>> And tell us more about Alice.
>> Alice.
>> Yeah.
>> Alice -- well, really, I
don't want to reveal too much.
Alice is a librarian, so it's
wonderful to talk about Alice here.
>> Yeah. I was going to
mention it, but I wanted you to.
[ Laughter ]
>> Alice is a librarian,
and since she's a librarian,
literature plays a really
big role in this book,
because she's a librarian and she
lived in a country made of paper.
She's quite a rebellious character.
And in fact, we'll find out towards
the end of the novel that her choice
to leave Italy was really
a form of rebellion.
She was born in 1930, so she had
lived the first part of her life
under fascism, and this is an
experience that deeply marked her
and her family in ways
that we discover towards
the end of the novel.
So the novel is also --
there is also a little bit
of a mystery to be solved.
Why did Alice leave and why
did Alice leave in those terms,
you know, without ever going back.
This is something we find out.
>> And I wanted to
ask, is it true --
or did you find it to be
true as many novelists say,
that your characters
reveal themselves
to you more than you creating them?
>> There is certainly some
truth in that, absolutely.
I mean, it is embarrassing, but I
found some notes about this novel --
-- from 1994.
Unfortunately, you know,
computer files are merciless.
I found some notes
form 1994, you know,
so it took me a long
time to write this novel.
And it is absolutely true that I
basically had one idea in mind,
the idea that I tried to
explain, the idea of Italy
as a cultural construction.
This is probably an
idea linked to my job --
to my work as a professor
at Georgetown --
I have the privilege really of
dealing with the best [inaudible]
as produced throughout
the centuries.
So I myself sometimes feel that I'm
living in a country made of paper.
So I had this notion -- this idea --
of the gap between Italy as a
cultural construct and Italy
as a political and physical entity.
And I had a scene, the first scene
of the novel, or the first scene
that I wrote in the novel.
And with this, too, I was
taking different paths
and I was going nowhere until the
novel and the characters really took
that direction -- as I say, the
A24 Highway that leads from Rome
to L'Aquila, and the novel seemed
to take its direction really.
And if I might add one more
thing, so I started also --
I realized when the novel
took me to L'Aquila,
that I could not find a
better metaphor for this idea
of a country made of paper,
then what happened to L'Aquila.
So the contrast between L'Aquila
with its past, its monument,
and L'Aquila as basically
an ugly suburb,
that's what it had been
turned into by the earthquake.
And if I do a little bit
of an auto self-analysis,
I also wonder if this notion on "Un
paese di carta" was so present to me
at that point because I had
witnessed the destruction
of the earthquake, and therefore,
this idea of the contrast
between Italy one dreams of and
the real Italy was appearing
to me particularly poignant at
that point because of this --
because of the earthquake.
>> Right. And I think another
contrast in the book --
or maybe not contrast,
but juxtaposition --
is between the past and the
present, and you have this balance.
And I know you have a reading from
your book that you'd like to do
and it shows this balance
between the past and the present.
>> OK. I should warn
you that this is --
so I translated with Emily's
help, I translated a passage
from the book for this occasion.
Actually, I adapted a
passage of the book.
This is the central scene of the
book or the first scene in the book.
It's the scene of Alice's death, and
it deals with the past and presence.
So Alice is very ill at this point.
She's 80 years old
and she's very ill.
She has a caretaker who comes to
her place, but that particular day,
the caretaker is late because --
you are not going to believe that
there was a problem with Metro.
[ Laughter ]
So I know you're thinking now this
is science fiction, this cannot be,
but you know, I thought
it was plausible.
Even in 2010, I thought
it could happen someday.
So the caretaker is late.
Alice thinks this is her one chance
to have one last something --
she doesn't know exactly what.
But she leaves her house,
her home in Bethesda,
and she gets on the
Capital Crescent Trail.
The Capital Crescent Trail
is this beautiful bike path
that from Bethesda takes you
all the way to Georgetown.
So she starts walking
along the path.
The passage is a bit long,
so the bad news is the passage
is a bit long; the good news is
that it's the only passage
that I'm going to read.
So just bear with me.
[ Laughter ]
The Capital Crescent Trail, a bike
path built over an old railroad,
was crowded as usual
at that time of day.
Dogs -- purebreds naturally --
trotted along, tethered by their
leashes to their proud owners.
Young women unwilling to surrender
to motherhood chase the dream
of a perfect body, pushing their
babies in jogging strollers.
Commuters sped by on
racing bicycles,
sporting yellow windbreakers
and streamlined helmets.
The most determined among them
carried the large saddlebags packed
with important documents, a change
of clothes, a couple of energy bars.
Now and then, they
glance at their watches
to make sure they were
keeping up with themselves.
"On your left," they called out to
warn pedestrians of their passing,
but they shouted without
animosity out of habit.
The most polite, [inaudible] time
to utter a distracted, "Thank you,"
as they rushed towards their
offices on Massachusetts Avenue
in Georgetown, even on Capitol Hill.
Alice was familiar enough with
the Capital Crescent Trail to know
that it was rare to spot a couple
holding hands as if this place
of affection were a waste of time.
Everybody -- from the
moms to the commuters --
seemed to be on a mission to get in
shape, to make the fastest commute,
to reach the right level of
cholesterol and blood sugar.
Suddenly, Alice found something
obscene about thinking of disease
or death out for a walk, a bit
like that old movie,
"Death Takes a Holiday".
She wrapped herself
in an oversized jacked
and tried to look presentable.
"Watch out on your left,"
somebody shouted, startling her.
Perhaps without realizing
it, she had veered
into the center of the path.
She decided to leave the
pavement altogether and move
to the gravel that ran next to it.
Better. That was better.
She could walk at her own pace with
no fear of disrupting the traffic.
That way, she could
even try to go as far
as the Aqueduct Tunnel and beyond.
Whatever happened, she thought,
the excursion was an expected
gift given the season.
The gravel was irregular, though.
Alice walked carefully, her
eyes fixed on the ground.
At first, she did not
notice the tall,
dark figure walking beside her.
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
The voice was a little more than
a whisper, but unmistakable.
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
"Sister [inaudible],"
Alice exclaimed.
The figure kept talking as
she walked, barely glancing
at the book at the hands.
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
"Sister [inaudible]," Alice called
again, yet, yes, it was she,
with her threatening [inaudible]
Latin phrases that she recited
in such devout stubbornness
as if her salvation depended
on the perfect articulation.
It occurred to Alice that if she
wanted to attract her attention,
she needed to try something
different,
perhaps to speak the same language.
She repeated the [inaudible].
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
[Inaudible] did not seem
to notice Alice's presence,
but waited until she finished
before continuing her lines.
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
She was walking faster and faster.
Alice tried to keep up,
but soon fell behind.
She screamed as if trying
to shake off her weakness.
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
But Sister [inaudible] dark
silhouette had already faded
into the trees along the trail.
Alice's words were
scattered to the wind.
Words scattered to the wind.
Wasn't that a line from a poem?
"Yes, but not one of my poems,"
said an animated voice at her side.
"He always makes things up, silly.
But no, it's that other
guy who wrote it.
Shoot. I can't remember his name.
Why are you looking at me like that?
You are made because I
called you silly, aren't you?
But it's not your fault
you're a silly child.
You actually know a lot of
poems for a little girl."
"Alberto? Why are you running
so fast, and what are you doing
with Daddy's hunting rifle?"
"Did you really believe I was going
to shut up and obey the Germans;
march where they told
me to go; [inaudible]?
Is that what you thought of me?
You heard about the
armistice, didn't you?
What are they doing still here?
Why don't they pack
their bags and go home?
What are they waiting for?"
"You're right, Alberto.
What are they doing here?
But then wait a minute,
I'm coming with you."
"Come on now, you're
being silly again.
How can you possibly come with
me when you are so little?"
All of a sudden he
seemed uncomfortable.
He loosened the scarf around
his neck, opened his jacket,
and took out a big stack of papers
held together by a purple ribbon.
"Listen, Alice, you gave me an idea.
My poems, why don't you keep them?
They'll only weigh me down."
He put the packet in Alice's hands
and ran away light on his feet.
She tried to chase him,
but quickly fell behind.
Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps she couldn't keep up.
She couldn't even take
care of his papers.
One after the other, they
escaped from the ribbon
and flew along the path
like fallen leaves.
Had autumn come so soon?
The pointless chase had taken Alice
close to the entrance of the tunnel.
The traffic of pedestrians and
occasional cyclists had fanned out
and the path was empty except
for a few later commuter bikers.
To enter the tunnel, Alice would
have to abandon the gravel and walk
on the pavement in the dark.
She wished that she had
brought a flashlight.
Perhaps if she hurried, though,
no cyclist would enter the
tunnel at the same time.
She took a deep breath before
diving into the darkness.
She knew she could not rely on
her eyes and that the only way
to stay straight was to
use the wall as a handrail.
She stretched out her fingers
to brush the side of the tunnel,
felt the dirt and humidity under
her nails, focused on her breathing
and kept walking toward the line.
A familiar presence sent
shivers down her spine.
It was Eric with his stone
jeans and his indigo T-shirt,
smiling his ironic smile.
His [inaudible] head
leaning slightly to one side.
His [inaudible] was out,
he was asking for a ride.
How could Alice say no?
She slows down.
Eric's smile is now victorious.
He turns around and
heads towards the river
as if he has forgotten about Alice.
But she's tired of illusive
encounters and [inaudible] ghosts,
and without a second thought,
she runs around after him.
The ground around the path is not
landscaped, it is slippery, ragged,
full of creepers, [inaudible],
fallen trees.
Alice loses her slippers, her
flannel pajamas are torn and muddy.
She scrapes her hands as she
reaches out for branches, bushes,
anything that might slow her
descent toward the river.
When she finally stops on the banks
of the Potomac, Eric
has disappeared.
She tries to catch her
breath as she looks around.
The Potomac is still
recovering from a rainy season.
For weeks, its impetuous
currents have carried
and deposited the debris left
behind by the summer storms.
Finally, in this mild beginning
of fall, the river is returning
to its normal majestic course.
Alice is mesmerized by the
gaze of the sun on the water.
"Hi, there."
Unlike Alice, Eric does
not look tired at all.
He smiles at her as he sits on the
grass with his usual casual air.
The expression of a
man who is not yet home
and is already planning his journey.
"Long time no see," he
approaches her with a smile.
"I was beginning to think
you'd never make it."
She moves closer.
"I'm sorry I'm late," she
thinks of telling him.
"I got distracted.
Half a century goes by
in the blink of an eye."
"Why don't you sit down?"
Alice bends over with great caution
as they taught her at the clinic,
first one knee, then the other.
The slipping ground is tricky
and she ends up flat on her back.
She finds that she's
not uncomfortable,
but will she get back on her feet?
"They were all wrong, all of them.
You were great.
How is our little girl doing?"
"She's fine.
Very well actually.
She's so beautiful -- our Jane
-- so confident, so grown up.
We are grandparents, you know.
We have three grandchildren, and the
eldest granddaughter is pregnant.
We'll be great-grandparents soon."
She would like to tell him all
of that, but she hesitates.
How can one tell such
things to a man in his 20s?
She would not want to upset him.
Eric lies down next to her.
With his fingers, he
caresses the grass.
Alice is beaming with light
and trembling with fear.
Now he will realize
I'm old, she thinks.
She's suddenly concerned
about her looks, her age,
the state of her pajamas.
She leans on her elbow
and lies on one side,
surreptitiously checking her pants.
She cannot believe what she sees.
Her legs emerge from under a
miniskirt and they are firm
and tanned -- the legs of a person
who has never foot in a gym,
but has walked all over out
of desire and curiosity.
She has not seen those legs in
a while, and bends her knee just
to watch the muscle flex
under the tight, smooth skin.
When she overcomes her surprise,
she realizes that Eric
has gotten very close --
so close, he's practically
leaning on her.
Alice recognizes that unforgettable
smell of wet underbrush
and saltiness, and follows his
lips as they move towards hers
until they are so close
they become blurry.
Kissing her with my soul upon my
lips, it suddenly took flight.
>> Tell us how you wrote that scene.
Oh, yeah.
[ Applause ]
>> I think this scene could be a
little confusing because it's --
especially for those who haven't
read the first 50 pages leading
to that scene.
Basically, Alice sees
the ghosts of the people
who were very dear to
her during her life.
So first, there is a nun -- she
studied with the nuns in L'Aquila.
Then there is her brother
who was a partisan.
And then there is Eric,
the man she loved
and whom she followed to the states.
The scene -- as you know, Emily
-- I mean, I was merciful,
the scene is much longer
in the original
because she meets other
people, she sees other people.
As I mentioned, I had one notion --
one concept -- the paese di carta,
the country made of paper --
and I had one scene in mind,
and this was the scene.
And probably in a way, this did
have an autobiographical origin
because I bike the Capital
Crescent Trail almost every day
to go to work.
I think I bike the trail
in every possible weather.
And there was a particular
day where it was very foggy,
and the few people I managed
to pass and the many people
who were passing me,
really looked like ghosts.
I could see them for a few
seconds and then they disappeared,
you know, swallowed by the fog.
So perhaps that's how
I got the inspiration.
It's wonderful to bike the trail,
but when you do it several times
a day, you know, twice a day
or several times a week for several
years, it does get a bit boring.
So I think it's [inaudible].
>> But now you can think of
Alice, so it's not boring at all.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. So Alice dies there on the
trail, but she does leave the book.
>> No.
>> She remains a presence in the
novel even after she has died.
Tell us about that and
what that was like.
>> Yeah. Perhaps I've gotten
very close to Alice even
in her short life in the book.
So I just couldn't bear
myself to let her go.
So after her death,
she's still a presence.
In fact, there is one of the
chapters that is titled "After".
And much to her surprise,
she discovers that although she has
died, she can still follow the lives
of the people around her.
So in that little urn with her
name, she's still something.
And so she keeps being
a presence a book,
and it is a very important
presence for me
because Alice has a very ironic
voice, and throughout the book,
she develops this kind of
sarcastic even at times --
ironic counterpoint to the events
in the lives of people around her.
So for instance, again, the scene
of the will, she's actually present
because all of the family is
there when the will is opened.
She can really judge the
reaction of the people around.
>> And she's present
because her ashes are
in the urn that is on the mantel --
>> On the mantel.
Absolutely.
>> -- in the room where
the will is being read.
>> On the mantel.
And she has also a hard
time adjusting to the mantel
because her daughter, Jane, has
accumulated also some rubbish.
You know, our homes tend to
be overcrowded with things.
And this mantelpiece in
particular has the hourglass,
the fake Murano glass,
all of this kind of junk.
And Alice has problems trying
to affirm her difference
from this other junk that
populates the mantelpiece.
So yeah.
>> I want to ask a question about
one of the parts of your reading.
So you referred to Alberto who is
Alice's brother, and the Germans,
and he's going off
with a hunting rifle.
This refers to the war, of course.
What was happening in L'Aquila
during the war at this time,
just give some background.
>> Yeah. Well L'Aquila -- I mean,
I don't want to give a
little history class, sorry.
But just very briefly
to introduce Alberto.
L'Aquila all of a sudden found
itself at the center of action
in a way because now talking 1943.
Mussolini had resigned on July 25,
1943, and had been made prisoner.
So he had been put in a prison
nearly L'Aquila in the mountains,
in the Apennines on the Gran Sasso.
Then September 8th, Italy signs
the armistice with the allies.
September 12th, the
Germans free Mussolini
from his prison in the Apennines.
So the events were really
going very, very fast.
Everybody was very confused.
The king had flown to the south, the
allies were coming from the south.
All of a sudden, L'Aquila
was packed with Germans.
And there had been this announcement
that all young men between age 18
and 25 had to be registered.
So people were afraid of
that to mean, you know,
that could mean a deportation,
that could mean being forced
to fight alongside with the
Germans and so on and so forth.
So in this very confusing
atmosphere, there were a group
of young people from L'Aquila who
on September 22nd left the town
and went to the mountains probably
to start a partisan brigade
or to reach other groups of
partisans in the mountains.
They were immediately captured.
They were captured the day after.
They were brought back to town,
and nine of them were
killed -- were executed.
So this was perhaps one of the first
episodes of resistance in Italy
because again, you know, the
armistice was on September 8th,
they were killed on September 23rd.
There is a lot of mystery
surrounding this episode
because the news of that was kept as
a secret until the end of the war,
until L'Aquila was liberated,
which happened on June 13, 1944,
so almost ten months later.
And it is still a mystery because --
and I did not know this
when I wrote the book,
I found out about this later --
there was a trial after
the war in 1947,
there was a trial about
this episode.
But the proceedings of the trial
are kept secret for 70 years.
So the trial was in 1947,
now next year in 2017,
we'll finally know what was
established during that trial.
Italy does not have the [inaudible]
of Freedom of Information Act.
So they have this --
the judge can say --
can establish that the
proceedings can be kept secret
and cannot divulged to the public.
I know that a journalist
tried to have access --
petition to have access to the
proceedings, and he was unable to.
I know of this case because the
journalist published an article
about this.
I don't know how many other
people tried to find out more
about the trial and they were
prohibited from doing so.
The link with the novel is that
I imagine that Alberto was one
of the nine martyrs -- as they are
called in Italian, [inaudible] --
who was killed in this circumstance.
So it's an imaginary character,
but he combines the characteristics
of some of these nine heroes.
Young age -- Alberto is only
17, and love for poetry.
One of the nine had already
published a book of poetry.
The youngest was 17 and the
oldest was 21 years old.
So in this way, the story of
Alice and Sarah intersects
with the history of the town.
>> And although we don't
know for sure what happens,
I've gathered from you that
one of the suggestions is
that perhaps these
young men were betrayed.
>> Yeah. There are several
issues that are not clear.
Why were they captured so soon?
Why was the news over
there kept as a secret?
So there are many things
that are not clear.
And [inaudible] Cavalieri [assumed
spelling], a historian who wrote
about this, says that they were
captured and killed and not only
by the Germans, but also
by Italian fascists.
But if we are talking about
Italian fascists in a small town,
we are talking about the neighbor,
the cousin, you know, relatives.
So it's really a burning issue.
So there I had some room
to maneuver, you know,
I could use what [inaudible]
calls the license to invent,
and I could offer a hypothesis
about the reason why they
were captured so soon.
So in the book, there is a
totally fictional hypothesis,
but that is coherent with
the historical framework.
And I don't know if I'm being clear.
But yeah.
>> And so earlier you
talked about --
>> Please explain this for me.
I'm not being very clear.
Help. Help.
>> No, she was clear.
>> Perfectly clear.
>> So going back to the
point about how Alice --
even after her death when
she's now cremated ashes --
she's still aware of
what's happening,
and she comments on what she sees.
Well, when Sarah, her granddaughter,
her takes the ashes back to L'Aquila
as Alice had wished, she
sees the state of the city.
So the late Alice makes
this observation
that even the war hadn't
hit L'Aquila
in the way that the earthquake did.
And maybe that's obvious,
but this really struck me
because you think World
War II being so monumental
and so catastrophic
in every possible way.
And here in the span of a couple
of seconds with the earthquake,
what Alice is sees is this
has hurt L'Aquila more.
I wanted to ask you
to elaborate on that.
Did you have that sense when
you went back to L'Aquila
after the earthquake and saw it,
or do you think this is true?
>> Well, it certainly
-- in the case L'Aquila,
it is true because there was an area
in L'Aquila near the train
station that was bombed.
But apart from that, the city was
largely spared by World War II.
So definitely the devastation
in L'Aquila has always happened
because of the earthquakes,
historical from --
L'Aquila has had earthquakes
throughout its history.
So yes, absolutely, it is true.
What has changed in the reaction
to the earthquakes, though,
is very interesting I think.
There is a passage in the novel.
So Sarah goes to L'Aquila and finds
that she's in a disastrous zone
and she was not prepared to that.
And she meets a young man from
L'Aquila who is very active
in trying to promote a
responsible rebuilding process.
And this young man at some point
explains to Sarah a little bit
of the history of the city.
And he says that L'Aquila has
always suffered from earthquakes.
And there was in particular,
a very strong earthquake less
than a century after
the town was built.
But in that case, the lord
of the town immediately --
-- sent out soldiers to all the
gates to prevent the population
from leaving the city because
the town was a recent town,
and actually the people --
the citizens of the town came from
various villages around the town,
so they were ready to go back.
And the lord of the
town said, "No way.
You will stay here
and you'll rebuild."
And now this young
man, Alesandro, says,
"Now this time, the
opposite happened.
This time the government
has intervened
to lock the town off
from the citizens.
So in other words, the entire town
has been declared as a disaster zone
and people are being forced to move
away, to go away from the town."
So the [inaudible] a centripetal
force, we have a centripetal force.
And I think that's an
interesting theme in the book.
The book is also a snapshot
of the situation in L'Aquila
at a particular point of
the rebuilding process
in the years 2010, 2011
when nothing was happening.
And it was only the activity,
the rebellion of the people
from L'Aquila that allowed the
rebuilding process to start.
I imagined Alesandro -- though
it's not mentioned in the book --
but I imagine Alesandro like one
of the people of the wheel barrels.
I wrote an article in
the "Post" about that.
So the people who after a year of
inactivity forced their entrance
into the center of
town only to discover
that nothing was being done,
that there was still rubble
and nothing was happening.
So I think probably I went
far away from the question.
>> That's OK.
She mentioned the "Post" --
>> But you have been my student,
so you are not surprised
by this kind of -- no?
[ Laughter ]
>> I want to add something.
She mentioned -- it is true,
I remember when this happened.
She wrote an article for the
"Post" when the earthquake happened
in L'Aquila and then one year
after on the anniversary.
And I went back and read them,
these two articles, before today
and they're -- of course,
it's non-fiction,
they're essays of commentaries.
But you can look them
up, they'll be online.
And many of the ideas
that Laura wrote
about in those articles surfaced
in various ways in the novel.
So if you're interested,
they're there.
I wanted to say, in many ways,
the book is about grief and loss.
You have Alice who loses the way of
life as she knew it after the war.
You have Sarah who loses her
grandmother when she dies.
You have the people of L'Aquila who
lose their town in the earthquake.
But in spite of all of that, it
feels to me like a hopeful book.
And I wonder if you
agree, and if you do, why?
>> No, I agree.
In fact, I'm always afraid of
this when I talk about the book.
I'm always afraid that
the book sounds more --
it sounds a bit depressing.
But [inaudible] --
>> It's not.
>> It's not.
Because in the end, sure, there
is grief and there is loss,
but in the end, communication
wins over silence.
The memory is preserved.
So in the end, I think that there
are human forces that manage
to overcome the obstacles.
In particular, I'm thinking, so
Sarah has to fulfill this mission
as to scatter her grandmother's
ashes in L'Aquila.
But really, her real mission is to
understand her grandmother's history
to establish that continuity
between past and present.
And it is at that point that
Alice can really die, you know,
because she had accomplished
her mission.
So I think there is after all,
a positive tone in the book,
an upbeat tone in the
book after all.
>> Yeah.
>> And there are many passages
that I had a lot of fun writing,
and I hope the readers
have some fun reading.
>> And what you said
about Sarah learning more
about her grandmother's life and
finally understanding why it was
that she had left Italy, it reminded
of a conversation we
had a long time ago
and we were talking
about the war in Italy.
And you said that there was --
you made this observation that so
much gets lost between generations,
and in particular, between
parents and children.
>> Absolutely.
>> And that's what you said.
And here, you have a granddaughter
who has this very profound
relationship with her grandmother.
And I wondered if when you writing
the novel, you thought about this --
everything that does get
lost between generations.
>> Oh, yes, absolutely.
>> Or that can be recuperated
as Sarah did.
>> Yeah. No, no, absolutely.
Yes, there is a lot, absolutely.
I mean, you probably --
with your work about victims
of the Holocaust -- you also
found this, that sometimes people
who have gone through a traumatic
experience don't necessarily want
to talk about that.
Or they talk about that in ways
that younger generations
are not ready to hear.
I'm thinking of that
beautiful short story
by Giorgio Bassani
about that, [inaudible].
But anyway -- so there
is a lot that gets lost,
but there are also ways
to recuperate that.
I think that sometimes, particularly
in this geneaology, granddaughter,
mother -- I never know how to
say -- basically the daughter,
so in this case, Jane,
sometimes it's the weak link.
Sometimes I find that even sometimes
with students, sometimes --
well, if I can give you yet
another pointless anecdote --
I will tell you that for instance,
at Georgetown at graduation a few
years ago, there was a young woman,
a student, an Italian major who came
with her mother and her grandmother.
And the mother could
not speak any Italian
and the grandmother was from Italy.
So basically, really the
younger person had managed
to recuperate the heritage
of the older generation.
This is something that we see
fairly, fairly often I'd say.
So perhaps there was a
little bit about that.
>> So I want to come back to Alice.
Why did you make her a librarian?
We're asking this [inaudible]
at the library.
[ Laughter ]
>> Yes, I would like to know.
>> Well, I was thinking
-- it just came that way.
I don't know.
I was thinking a person
who loved literature.
At the beginning when
she moves to the states,
she has to do other jobs, she
works in stores, et cetera.
But at some point, triumphantly,
she writes this letter saying
that I'm finally a librarian and I'm
even organizing language classes.
I don't know.
Perhaps it was in keeping with
the idea of "Un paese di carta".
She's a librarian with
a passion for languages
and for literature of course.
>> And in particular -- so
Alice loves Italian literature,
she loves Russian literature,
Russian poetry.
These, by the way, are all
characteristics of Laura.
[ Laughter ]
So I'm going to tell -- it's
not a pointless anecdote,
there is a point.
There are no pointless anecdotes.
So I took a number of classes that
Laura taught at Georgetown and one
of them was a course on
contemporary Italian poetry.
And it was so great.
It was great because every
day we would go to class
and she would read the poems.
And it was fantastic to listen
to listen to her read them
and I looked forward
to it every week.
So then at a certain point,
Laura decides that it's time
for the students to learn to
recite these poems in Italian.
And all of the fun went away
because we weren't good at it.
I mean, there were no
Italians in the class,
we didn't speak Italian that well.
It was horrible to
listen to these poems.
[ Laughter ]
And so the class just
wasn't that much fun
after Laura stopped
reading the poems.
So since everyone is here, even
if you don't speak Italian,
I assume that you're
interested in Italian
because you're at this event.
And so I'm taking advantage
and I'm going
to ask Laura to read a poem here.
And this poem figures --
it's a very short passage --
it figures in the book.
So could you first -- you don't have
to translate it, but explain to us
who wrote this and what it's about.
And then would you read this to us?
>> We haven't prepared this.
[Inaudible].
So it's a passage in the
book, and at some point Sarah
in L'Aquila meets her grandmother,
so Alice's fiancé whom Alice had
left when she move to the states.
And the fiancé is also linked with
the other story about the war.
But anyway, the fiancé is of
course also a passionate reader
of literature.
And the way Sarah manages
to take the secrets
out of this old man
is by reciting poems.
So she recites some Russian poetry.
And then really the breaking
point when she recites --
because I mentioned that Sarah
has an extraordinary memory --
and so she recites this
passage from [inaudible]
where in the very final battle,
Solomon, one of the characters,
climbs a tower, and from the tower,
he looks at what [inaudible] calls
the Great Theater of Human Life,
the Great Place of
Chance and Destiny.
And this is really the breaking
point because this old man,
like all of us, perhaps the
more we age, the more we wonder
about these things
-- really wonders.
So was it chance?
Was it destiny?
Why did things happen in
the way they happened?
Could things go any differently?
And this is the passage.
[ Speaking Foreign Language ]
>> So see why we missed
that when she stopped?
[ Laughter ]
>> Do you have a translation
for that?
No?
>> No.
>> You can go home and look it up.
>> Louise, can you
improvise a translation.
We have a wonderful translator
here, Louise [inaudible],
but she's not working today.
>> No.
[ Laughter ]
>> But anyway, that's the
-- yeah, it's really --
>> [Inaudible] you got
the context [inaudible].
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah.
>> So we wanted to save
plenty of time for questions.
So please, I know Laura is happy to
answer any questions you might have.
Don't be bashful.
>> So please explain -- this
is all very interesting --
please explain where your
early life in Italy --
where you grew up and
how you decided to write
about this particular area --
section of Italy in the
hills -- the Apennines.
>> Yeah. I am from
L'Aquila, I grew up there,
I went to high school there.
Then I started in Rome,
and then from Rome,
I went first to Canada then
came to the US to study.
Then I lived in Paris for a while,
then I came back to the US to work.
I think is actually my
personal limitation that I have.
It is impossible for me
to write about places
that I don't know personally.
I mean, recently, I
was trying to write --
I was writing something and I wanted
to just have a small scene
in a small Italian town.
So in order not to have
everything happen in L'Aquila
because L'Aquila is a small
town, it seems kind of absurd
that everything happens there,
I was thinking of [inaudible],
I thought comparable town, almost
the same size, provincial town.
I wasn't able to have characters
have a cup of coffee in [inaudible],
you know, take a bath
in [inaudible],
as if they were on the moon.
I could not picture anything.
So in a way, the novel is
obviously not autobiographical,
but it's geographically
autobiographical.
I talk of places that, you
know, I lived in Bethesda.
I know L'Aquila fairly well.
And even there is also another
trip to the western United States,
to Utah, and that's a place
I don't know very well,
but which I've visited
and I liked very much.
Perhaps that only has to do with my
personal limitations as an author.
>> There are a lot of
Italians from [inaudible],
many [inaudible] that emigrated.
Can you talk a little bit
about why [inaudible] that part
of [inaudible] that came here?
>> Well, it was a very poor part
of Italy, especially my part
of Abruzzo, so really the
Apennines, those villages used to --
in fact, when you go there,
you see some ghost villages
where they were extremely,
extremely poor.
There's this beautiful novel
by [inaudible] from Tamara,
takes place during
the fascist years,
but they also [inaudible] like,
the historical reasons
why this part was so poor.
But also geographically, there
aren't a lot of resources,
it's very hard, the
land is very barren.
So that's why you find a lot of
people from Abruzzo, but especially
from the province of L'Aquila
[inaudible] who have left.
Absolutely.
>> You call --
>> OK.
>> You're in charge.
>> Back there.
>> She's in charge.
>> I didn't come here with
any special expectations,
but the novel seems the
perfect gift for a friend I have
in Santa Monica who
is from [inaudible].
But I'm not clear.
Is the book for sale [inaudible]?
>> No, not here.
>> Is it for sale in the
US or only from Italy?
>> The books -- sorry for
the commercial pitch --
but the book can be ordered by a
variety of sites, so like, Amazon --
>> In the US?
>> In the US, I found
that the best way --
and again, this is a site I'm
not at all connected with,
I don't get a percentage from it --
but the best site is
bookdepository.com
because they ship anywhere in the
world without shipping charges.
And the price is very good because
the price is, you know, 13 euros;
in Italy, they charge $15.
So it's really a fair conversion.
So that's the best way I've
found to order books from the US.
>> And one last question.
Since you had so much
trouble with the title,
I assume it's not being translated.
But is any translation [inaudible]?
>> Now, this inspired me actually,
this work that we did from Emily.
She looks at me with fear.
Because there are two people
-- Louise and Emily --
who have to fear my
ambitions with English.
But anyway, I am working
on a translation, yes,
but it's not for the near future.
So if somebody can read Italian,
I would go with the Italian.
Unless Emily has a
lot of spare time.
[ Laughter ]
>> Go ahead.
>> Dr. Benedetti, tell us a little
bit about your moving from Harvard
to Georgetown and sort
of a comparison.
As a graduate in linguistics from
Georgetown, I'd be interested
in the comparison of the
two wonderful universities.
>> Well, you know, to be
honest, perhaps the simplest way
to explain this is that my daughter
just started college at Georgetown.
And you know, we always thought --
my husband also taught at Harvard --
and we always thought that
Georgetown does an excellent job.
And yeah.
[ Laughter ]
I don't know if I can add anything.
>> [Inaudible].
Thank you.
>> More questions?
Feel free.
Go ahead.
>> Dr. Benedetti, can you comment
on how Alice was living in a country
but [inaudible] also living un
paese di carta, the old country?
How did these two backgrounds
[inaudible] in her personality,
and did they make her stronger or
did they present some downsides?
>> She definitely had
some problems adjusting.
But I thought that more than
-- yeah, it's interesting.
She had problems adjusting.
But since I don't go too much into
her life, this is like the clash
of cultures is not really analyzed
as far as Alice is concerned,
but there is more of a discussion
of that when Sarah goes to Italy.
At that point, since Sarah has
lived in un paesa di carta as well,
because she has learned Italian
that her grandmother taught her,
so she has several problems
already using a language
that is way too elegant and
refined for contemporary Italians.
So she speaks Italian very well, but
her Italian is somewhat literary.
Or adjusting to the various Italian
habits and idiosyncrasies, you know.
So --
-- Sarah was very important
to me because she allowed me
to show a country and also the
situation of the earthquake
as if I were seeing
it for the first time.
Again, you know, the Russian
formalists call this [inaudible]
or estrangement, having a character
who is new to a certain situation
and therefore allows a writer
to present a situation as if he
or she were seeing it
for the first time.
So it's Sarah more than Alice
who deals with the two worlds.
Absolutely.
>> Go ahead.
>> Yes. The novel is
fantastic I thought, you know.
But it's also a novel about
language -- it's not just a story,
but it is a commentary
on Italian language.
And as such, it defines the paese
di carta, the language itself.
And in fact, as a librarian, Alice
pays a lot of attention to grammar.
And she talks about the use
of a subjunctive, for example,
with a lot of examples explaining it
to the granddaughter,
which was Sarah.
And this is only one
example of attention
to language, but there were many.
And I wonder how would you
address this in translation?
It's almost impossible.
>> I love that question because
it's a beautiful part of the book.
And I had made a note --
another example, you were
mentioning the subjunctive,
and at another point, Alice
talks about the passato remoto --
>> Passato remoto.
Yes.
>> -- which is one form
of the past tense in --
>> Which does not exist in English.
>> Right. And which is sort of
something that Alice is saying,
is it's falling into disuse in
Italy, even though it's so elegant
and conveys meaning beyond what
sort of the normal past tense would.
And so I've written this down.
So it's Alice who says that,
"The people who don't
use the passato remoto --
who don't use this tense -- that
they lose a dimension of their past.
They're like the Romans who
stopped using the future tense,
and they lost their empire."
[ Laughter ]
Back to you.
[ Laughter ]
So there are two examples and --
>> Yes. Absolutely, "Un paese
di carta" is also the language,
absolutely.
And in fact, when I started
translating the book,
I stopped precisely
there, the passato remoto,
because I did not know how
to get around this problem.
It's true because language
is very central in the novel.
So the particular case of
the passato of remoto --
so the passato remoto is this form
of the past that they use in Italy,
so the remote past that they use
in Italy is a very
literary [inaudible] past.
And the scene where this becomes
important is during the last evening
that Alice spends with Jane.
Alice dies the day after.
And Alice -- since
she loves languages --
when Jane, her daughter, goes
to visit her, she says, "Well,
you know, I don't want to pray,"
because Alice is also fiercely
secular in her approach to life,
"But let's recite some conjugation.
Let's recite some passato remoto."
And Jane has a very
conflicted relation not only
with her daughter,
but also with her mom.
She says, "Ah, at the end of a
day at work, and now here I am,"
you know, struggling
with this thing.
But Alice insists, and so she
says, you know, she starts with,
"To be born in the passato remoto,
then to grow up, then love and die."
That's how the chapter
ends with [inaudible],
with the passato remoto, the
conjugation of passato remoto.
It's important -- it's not
just a grammar point --
Alice is afraid of the
past, her experience,
her entire life goes lost.
And that's why I was saying
the book is a positive book,
because in the end, Sarah does
manage to reconstruct the story,
so the passato remoto is not lost.
So it's not an [inaudible], you
know, trivial grammar point,
it's really essential to the way the
character sees the world and also
to the way the novel is constructed.
It's going to be very
challenging to do that in English.
So in fact, there had to be
another novel altogether perhaps.
Yeah. I haven't come across
a possible solution to that.
Oh, there is another passage
when Alice writes to the man,
her fiancé in Italy, the only letter
that she writes to
her fiancé in Italy.
She says she gets really interested
in another tense, the
past condition.
And she says, "There
are some languages
that don't have the past condition,"
and apparently this is true,
"And so therefore, you cannot say
oh, if I had not gone to England,
I would be a happy person now.
You cannot say that.
Once you have not gone to
England, you cannot resurrect
that possibility even for
like, a rhetorical game."
And so Alice says, "So we
should do the same thing.
I abolish the conditional past.
I don't want to think about
what would have happened
if I had stayed."
So there are many observations
like that,
but the conditional past
works in English as well.
But the passato remoto is
probably doomed to disappearance.
[ Laughter ]
>> More questions?
>> I have a comment and a question.
A comment about the issue of the
lost -- and we talked about that,
you guys talked about that.
I actually found [inaudible]
that it's actually a novel
of discovery and recovery.
Discovery because with Sarah, we
get to know the past of Alice --
her life or what probably
Jane didn't even know.
So we get reconnected through
generations [inaudible].
And then the recovery from Alice,
and she actually moves back
to the place [inaudible].
And we discover [inaudible] L'Aquila
and then she gets reconnected
[inaudible].
So I found that very
positive in this sense.
And then my question is -- Alice --
Alice for me is a very interesting
character and I loved her.
And it felt so realistic.
Like, I really, when I read the
book, I felt like she was there.
And she's connected
to [inaudible] events
in Italy that actually happened.
So we get to know history --
a part of history in the book.
Just to make it short,
I didn't know anything
about nine martyrs
before reading the book.
So when I read the book, I
thought there was like [inaudible].
So I looked it up on the
internet and I saw a video.
I watched a video about a lady
who actually was there the day
that those nine kids -- young
people -- were captured.
And I said, "Oh, she
must have known Alice."
[ Laughter ]
So for me, Alice was so realistic,
that I actually thought
she was a real person.
So my question is who
is Alice, like,
who inspired you to
write about Alice?
>> No, no, no, I don't
have anyone --
>> The story is fiction.
>> Yes. Totally fictional.
But as I said, she became very real,
and perhaps that's why
I could not abandon her.
But no, there is no inspiration,
no real person who inspired that.
>> Is there time for
one more question?
>> Yes, there is.
>> Sure, of course.
Let's hear his question and then --
>> [Inaudible].
I have a question.
You mentioned this taking
a long time to write.
I was just wondering -- you talked
about '94 you found notes from.
I was wondering what kind of --
if your thinking has changed,
what has changed over the years
that has given you insight
into maybe the characters
or "Un paese di carta".
I'm just wondering the evolution
of your thinking on this.
>> The notes from 1994 were
actually about Thanksgiving dinner.
So this family, you know,
it's like all families,
it's a bit dysfunctional.
So they all fight together
around the Thanksgiving table
and there are some tensions.
And this was the part
that I was trying to --
completely different
setting, though.
The idea I was working on in 1994,
a very almost theatrical piece,
although I intended to
write a novel -- a family.
You know, everybody is there
with their little things.
And there is one person who is ill
and would like to tell everybody.
But at the end of the day, she
does not manage to say anything --
which in the novel, is Jane.
And Jane thinks she's ill,
actually, she's not ill at all.
But she thinks she's ill, but
she doesn't have the conversation
at the dinner table,
goes completely crazy
because Sarah has some big
revelations for everybody.
Anyway, everything goes wrong and
she does not manage to say anything.
But those were the notes
that I found from 1994
that somehow then merged
with the rest of novel.
The novel itself, when I
started really writing it,
I wrote it with those different
breaks from different times
in a relatively short time,
six or seven months I
had written the novel.
The rest was just revising
it and trying
to make the characters
more believable.
>> I think you had another question.
>> One more question.
Yes. I go back to the [inaudible].
You mentioned that Alice is a rebel.
Right. And so is Sarah.
And in between, we have
Jane who is not the rebel,
she is a rather conformist
type of character.
But Alice and Sarah
rebelled in a similar way.
Alice runs out -- runs
away with a man.
And this [inaudible] period
of time, at that time,
it was a very rebellious
thing to do.
Nowadays, it's not, it's very
normal, very everyday occurrence.
Now, you don't have to run away,
you can just live next
door with a partner.
So Sarah rebels in a different way,
she has a relationship with a woman.
And in our time it's
not so normal yet.
So is this something [inaudible] to
create a [inaudible] between the two
of them with the similar,
let's say breakaway
that connotes their rebellion?
>> Yeah. There's definitely
some spiritual affinity
between Alice and Sarah, definitely.
They are both rebellious.
My idea was that -- so the story is
that Sarah is sent for a gap year
out west because she
has several problems,
especially she likes
alcohol a bit too much.
And there, the story
of her discovery
of her homosexuality was really
-- almost came from the landscape,
you know, from the
[inaudible] National Park
where she [inaudible]
of the [inaudible].
She discovers a completely
different part of her country.
She's very much -- Sarah is very
much product of the East Coast
and she finds herself in a
completely different landscape.
And as part of that discovery,
she also has this relationship
with a woman which then the
relationship then creates some
tension in the family.
But sometimes she is also
almost imagined by --
Sarah is always trying to find
reasons to gather her mother.
So old poor Jane keeps telling
her, "Look, I couldn't care less,
you know, this is [inaudible],"
and so on and so forth.
But Sarah wants to have one more
reason to make her mother upset.
And actually, this
interaction between Jane
and Sarah really kept
me very, very busy,
but I think that poor Jane caught
between these two rebels is actually
an interesting important character.
It's just much more generous for
instance, much more open-minded
that the two -- you
know, the old one
and the young one would
believe she is.
>> Well, I am sorry, but
we have to conclude here.
I think it was a wonderful
presentation of this novel
in English for the first time.
So I'm very proud about that.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you, Dr. Benedetti.
Thank you, Emily.
And thank you all for joining us.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.