From a beach in the middle of nowhere, reading lysergic stories by an undercover author I just discovered.
by Angelo Flaccavento
I feel a bit hesitant, even embarrassed, in writing these notes, as I have nothing remotely similar to Glenn and Robb’s (there’s something going on with names ending in final double consonant on this blog, it seems) fire-working, Draculean nightlife. And day-life too, I suppose. For a start, I’m secluded voluntarily on this Mediterranean island known to the world as Sicily, an apt place for someone whose nom de guerre -one of many- is Kaktus. Then, even when I go out and party-I swear I do-I’m an iconoclast in the true sense of the word- I abhor pictures and having my picture taken. I don’t even own a camera. I’ll work on that, believe me, and will be fully equipped for future entries.
As it’s here at a stone’s thrown, I hit the beach fronting the clear warm salty Mediterranean as often as I can. If I don’t do that, I’m either glued to the computer, writing, out alone late at night looking for a vampire, scribbling on walls and gluing stickers here and there in the shoes of my other alter ego, the grumpy graffitist MONK (the nickname was given when I started sporting a super-short crop and a full beard "like a monk", a girl said, and it stuck) or reading. Reading a lot. Recently I came across an author who really hit a chord, I was at the local bookstore, and this weighty tome by Tommaso Pincio, just called to me. It had a great cover , with every word in the enthralling title -La ragazza che non era lei, i.e. The girl who wasn’t herself-printed in a different color. Then , I found lysergic depth behind the surface. For a start, the author’s name is a cover-up, a nom de guerre (I love those, it’s apparent), which is by the large Thomas Pynchon translated into Italian. Nobody knows his real name. He lives in Rome. I’m sure he’s a junkie, or he has been a junkie, or he knows deeply well many junkies. His stories are too full of jumps and inexplicable gasps for him not to be a junkie. I never got high in my life, but reading one of his passages must give a similar sensation. Apart from a spellbinding cleverness in building stories like Chinese boxes–you start in an imaginary place called Cloaca Maxima and in the space of 50 pages, without even noticing, you’re in 60’s Cisco, having passed from Great Britain during the WWII-what really struck me is his capacity to turn words into worlds. Pincio manages the semiotic space between words like a ringmaster. He opens abysses, in a seamless, fluent writing. I’ve become addicted, and am now in the process of reading everything that he wrote. It’s a rel trip, at the end of which all my neurons will be safely in place, and the fantasy totally nourished. I’m not sure if anything from him has been translated. you can check www.tommasopincio.com.
