Sunday, October 08, 2006

Italy's Fascination with Jack Kerouac

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Annually  Lowell, Massachusetts has a  "Lowell Celebrates Kerouac!" festival, his birth and burial place. 

"On The Road" was one of the first American novels translated into Italian, not long after the first, Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms", and it carries a special resonance in Italy, which is what brought nine Italian journalists to Lowell for the Festival. 

The Italians are "the most cuckoo for Kerouac," though he is embraced throughout Europe. "They see him as the quintessential American character."  He compares the sweeping myth of Kerouac's decidedly American work to Western movies.

"To the Italians, it seems like he's the Clint Eastwood -- the maverick -- of the second half of 20th century literature. I think they relate to the jazz, the cosmopolitan-ness of The Beats. The Beats were of the American Earth but they had a sophisticated worldliness and I think that Europeans relate to that."

"Kerouac represents the sense of freedom all the young men have. It is the myth of travel without a target, without a goal. It has a big sense of liberation that still attracts young people to this. Every young man wants to be this."

"The first thing, ours is a small country, You don't have the chance to travel for hours and days without reaching a destination. You can go from coast to coast in three hours, and from Milano to Sicily in 14 hours."Italians can only imagine the epic scope of the criss-cross American journey Kerouac wrote in "On The Road".

Luigi Grella, the editor of Airone, says Kerouac's appeal springs from "his individualism. We are an anarchic people. We have a problem respecting the rules. We look at rules with benevolence."

 

ITALIANS KEEP THE BEAT STRONG

 

Lowell Sun

By David Perry

October 8, 2006

Jack Kerouac's On The Road is his quintessential work, the American Myth writ bold, large and fast from a passenger seat.

It carries a special resonance in Italy, which is what has brought nine Italian journalists to Lowell, city of Kerouac's birth, and where he lies in death.

"The eye of the storm," as Lowell Mayor Bill Martin called it, welcoming the Italian writers over lunch.

In a visit that coincided with the annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival, the writers and editors arrived Thursday night. They leave today for their homes in Milan and Rome.

"Italy has an affair with Kerouac," says Deb Belanger of the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau. She was only too happy to arrange the rendezvous. They will publish work that the CVB and Tourism Massachusetts hopes will draw folks to Lowell, especially when Kerouac's original On The Road scroll begins its three-month display in Lowell next June.

"The people here today will help promote the city and the scroll when they go home," Belanger says. The words of the nine journalists will reach millions.

Kerouac is the hook, says Olga Mazzoni, who has been arranging such visits for the past decade for Tourism Massachusetts. "If not for the name Jack Kerouac, I would not be able to attract Italians to come over here. But when I mentioned his name, they all said, 'are you serious?' They jumped at the chance."

Paul Marion, the Lowell writer who edited Atop An Underwood, a collection of Kerouac's previously unpublished early work, says the Italians are "the most cuckoo for Kerouac," though he is embraced throughout Europe.

"They see him as the quintessential American character."

He compares the sweeping myth of Kerouac's decidedly American work to Western movies.

"To the Italians, it seems like he's the Clint Eastwood -- the maverick -- of the second half of 20th century literature. I think they relate to the jazz, the cosmopolitan-ness of The Beats. The Beats were of the American Earth but they had a sophisticated worldliness and I think that Europeans relate to that."

Italy was the first country to translate Atop An Underwood, Marion says.

"It wasn't a best-seller, but it was like one of the deeper album cuts, and they showed interest."

Friday, over a lunch of pizza, sausage, salad, pasta and Pelligrino at Caffe Paradiso, the Italian giornalistas spoke of their country's fascination with the Lowell-born writer, born in the spring of 1922, dead at 47 in the leafless fall of 1969.

They all credit the influential writer and intellectual Fernanda Pivano, who first translated the work of Kerouac and other Beats for Italians.

They say Italians relish Kerouac's submission to freedom, his fearlessness and willingness to follow its siren call.

There are socio-economic reasons for his Italian popularity, too.

Massimo Pacifico was last in Lowell more than a decade ago, to write and photograph Kerouac's Lowell for Panorama. He ended up publishing the book Lowell, MA: Where Jack Kerouac's Road Begins in 1996.

Pacifico, 55, says he's considering "a completely new project" for 2007, which involves the other eight journalists.

Pacifico founded a glossy magazine called Verve five months ago. He sees "there has been a lot of investment in Lowell."

"When I arrived, I discovered the city was not only important as Jack Kerouac's birthplace, but even more as being the first industrial city in the new continent ... It was a very unique combination of literature and the social, the industrial and the city's architecture."

Kerouac is "much loved" in Italy, and On The Road was one of the first American novels Pivano translated, not long after the first, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.

"Kerouac represents the sense of freedom all the young men have. It is the myth of travel without a target, without a goal. It has a big sense of liberation that still attracts young people to this. Every young man wants to be this."

"It is the myth, especially in On The Road," says Milan-based Federica Brunini, who writes for L'Espresso.

"For all generations of Italians, it is kind of a symbol of the United States. I am too young, 34, so I read it after all the Beat Generation had passed. But On The Road is a kind of book for everyone who wants to travel and know the story of the U.S. culture. If you are young, and you want to know really about Americans, you have to read it."

She picked up On The Road in high school and found it "not an easy book to read. But there was a fascination. Even you don't want to travel it tells you about a period. I was at the commemorative earlier. There is some text from A Traveler written there, a kind of testament, for every person who wants to travel, not only from one place to another, but a kind of mind travel. If you want to know the world, I think you should read Kerouac."

Luigi Grella, the editor of Airone, a monthly magazine of nature, culture and heritage, says Kerouac's appeal springs from "his individualism. We are an anarchic people. We have a problem respecting the rules. We look at rules with benevolence."

Kerouac seemed "a revolutionary. He anticipated the times, writing what he did 50 years ago."

Many Italians "wanted to travel his freedom trail" in the 1970s and '80s, and I think a new generation is starting to appreciate his message ... I want to see if the freedom image of Kerouac translates also 50 years later.

It is Grella's first trip to Lowell, "but you can feel the atmosphere here, and it is important to understand what happened here 60 years ago to understand (Kerouac)"

For all his youthful bluster and recklessness, who would Kerouac be today, wonders Grella, "if he were alive now?

"In Italy, there is a joke. At 20, you light a big fire. At 60, you are a fireman."

Jasmina Trifoni is a freelance magazine writer, 40, from Rome. She read Kerouac's Dharma Bums when she was 19, in Thailand.

"A very freaky place, like you enjoy when you are young. So it was perfect for my personal experience in Asia."

Kerouac continues to appeal to young Italians.

"But we are also very provincial in a way, and have a passion for our own authors more than others."

Raffaelle Panizza, 32, write for Vogue, Max, Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. He discovered Kerouac at 16.

"The first thing, ours is a small country," he says. "You don't have the chance to travel for hours and days without reaching a destination. You can go from coast to coast in three hours, and from Milano to Sicily in 14 hours."

He says Italians can only imagine the epic scope of the criss-cross American journey Kerouac wrote in On The Road.

But even those who don't read Kerouac call long trips "an On the Road" journey, "so his invention is in our vocabulary."

Kerouac is not in school curriculum ("we usually study Italian writers"), but his work is a sort of rite of passage.

"He discussed the freedom of sex, and finding your real focus inside of you. It was 25-30 years before Italians could do that."

Panizza's parents (born in 1939 and 1940) went to work at 10 in an Italy still recovering from World War II.

"The cities were destroyed and my parents had to go to work." Post-war America, sprawling and thriving, seemed like "science-fiction" to their generation.

Reading Kerouac is "something you have to do to get close to American culture. Like listening to Bob Dylan, Springsteen, and watching the Blues Brothers movie. They are icons."

They are ideas that "burn in your life," he says.

"In Italy, we eat well, live long stay close to our family. It is self-protective."

"The idea of Kerouac is burning your life, it is fascinating. Doing things you never tried.'

Pacifico read On The Road when he was 18. It was part of an inexpensive pocket book series.

"Travel was not that easy as it is now. That kind of freedom travel gives you ..."

He laughs.

"I don't know if I became a famous travel writer because of him, but I could be."

For listings of today's events, visit the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Website, lckorg.tripod.com.

David Perry's e-mail address is dperry@lowellsun.com.

 

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