Conducted by Julia Wallace
Ithaca College Intern to Cayuga Lake Books
- Your love for Italy goes beyond this collection, as you’ve written other works that have links to the country. What do you hope your audience will take away with them about Rome, as compared to the locales in your previous publications?
Most visitors to Rome feel instantly at home. Why is this ancient capital so eerily familiar? I think it’s because Rome is a repository for human memory. The Eternal City is not a physical but a mental state—a dimension of the imagination in which nothing constructed ever perishes and the earliest stages of civilization survive beside the latest. To see the past in the present or the present in the past, we need only change our perspective.
- Have you noticed any significant changes in Pasquino’s voice from the beginning of your column-writing to the publication of this collection? What adaptations to Pasquino did you feel were the most beneficial in helping this character evolve?
In my columns for L’Italo Americano, Pasquino rarelyaddressed his readers or participated in the action. He remained a detached observer, reporting on contemporary news or chronicling past events in Rome. The subjects were always topical and often related to holidays and seasons—a fitting approach for a newspaper but not for a book. If I wanted to engage readers for 250 pages, Pasquino had to be more than a clever commentator. He would need to become a complex narrator with a personal stake in every tale. So I gave my talking statue a back story and allowed him to express a wide range of feelings.
- One of the most engaging aspects of this book is Pasquino’s honest, witty narrative voice. What was your process for developing such a knowledgeable yet lovable narrator?
I composed many of Pasquino’s monologues while listening to the film comedian, Alberto Sordi. Sordi, who studied to be an opera singer, had a melodious bass voice. This versatile and expressive instrument allowed him to play everyone from traffic cops to aristocrats.Whatever the role, however, Sordi always spoke with a thick Roman accent. As he aged and became an ambassador of pop culture, Sordi developed a certain gravitas, especially when discussing history, politics, and art on Italian TV, but he remained genial, funny, and down-to-earth. I wanted Pasquino to sound like that.
4. I’m curious about the personal relationship you have with Rome. Could you share some of your journey and history with the city you fell in love with?
Emotionally, Rome is my second home. I correspond with cousins in the Monteverde district and read the Roman newspaper online. But my earliest impressions of the city remain the most vivid. The first time I saw the city, I was twelve and had begun reading classical Latin literature in translation. The second time, I was seventeen and had watched the entire I, Claudius series on PBS. Visiting Rome, therefore, was like traveling back in time. Every monument, every cobblestone told an ancient story.
- In Chapter 6, “The World’s People,” the mistreatment of the Roma is compared to the trial and execution of the early astronomer Giordano Bruno. What inspired you to connect Bruno’s altruistic heresy to the injustice that these people face?
The recent hate crimes in Rome upset me. Racial violence betrays the spirit of this city. Ancient Romans called their capital communis patria, common country. Rome is supposed to provide asylum for fugitives, exiles, and outcasts, so it was particularly traumatic to see atrocities occur in the Campo de’ Fiori, Rome’s multi-ethnic market. Immigrants were beaten literally in the shadow of Giordano Bruno’s statue. Bruno, burned at the stake for daring to claim that the universe contains other inhabited planets besides ours, never considered anyone an alien.
- In Chapter 39, “God and Mastro Titta,” readers may be shocked to learn the reality of the justice system in Rome throughout the 1800s. Do you view Mastro Titta as the exotic legend portrayed in theatersor as a soulless killer, given the setting and era he was working in?
I don’t think Mastro Titta was a soulless killer. By all accounts, he was an easy-going, good-natured civil servant, who would have preferred another line of work but still felt compelled to do what he considered his duty. I am far more appalled by the brutality of the law and the cruelty it inspires in mobs. Such violence is possible only because public indifference sanctions it.
- I especially enjoyed the shift in Pasquino’s voice in the book’s final chapter. What was your purpose in giving him a different voice here?
The final chapter is both a benediction and a valediction. Pasquino treats readers to gelato (Italian ice cream) at a shop near the Trevi Fountain and recounts ceremonies of death and rebirth from the old Roman Carnival. If his voice seems more intimate and urgent, it’s because histime has run out. Rome may be eternal, but talking statues are not. Pasquino realizes, perhaps for the first time, that he can never share everything he knows about his beloved city, not even if he should live foranother thousand years. Most writers feel that way about Rome. Silvio Negro, the 20th century journalist, said it best: “Roma, non basta una vita.” (“One lifetime is not enough for Rome.”)
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