Tuesday,
February 03, 2009
Italian Mystery Writer Andrea Camilleri Keeps Montalbano on the Case
The
ANNOTICO Report
Americans
have Philip Marlowe and Raymond Chandler. Britons have Sherlock Holmes and
Arthur Conan Doyle. And Italians have Salvo Montalbano and Andrea Camilleri.
Camilleri, a bespectacled, gravel-voiced 83-year-old, has
become a national character as beloved as his Montalbano, a shrewd, resolutely
Sicilian police commander who solves crimes in the fictional town of
Remarkably, Camilleri's career didn't take off until
he was nearly 70, when he retired as a playwright and screenwriter. Since then,
he has published an astonishing 40-plus books and sold 20 million copies
internationally,
Italian Mystery Writer Andrea Camilleri Keeps Montalbano on the Case
At
83, the retired playwright provides a steady stream of suspense with the
Sicilian police commander series. The author's historical novels round out his
passions.
By Sebastian Rotella
February 3, 2009
Reporting
from
Camilleri, a bespectacled, gravel-voiced 83-year-old,
has become a national character as beloved as his Montalbano, a shrewd,
resolutely Sicilian police commander who solves crimes in the fictional town of
Remarkably, Camilleri's career didn't take off until
he was nearly 70, when he retired as a playwright and screenwriter. Since then,
he has published an astonishing 40-plus books and sold
20 million copies internationally, inspiring a series of made-for-TV movies
and, in
It's
not unusual for Camilleri to have two or three titles
atop European bestseller lists at once. In addition to the Montalbano
mysteries, he writes works of historical fiction full of humor and a virtuoso
command of dialect.
At an age when most people tend to focus on scheduling medical visits, he gets
up every day at 6 a.m. in his comfortable apartment here, showers, dresses and
gets to work. And enjoys himself enormously.
"I spent 30 years in television, theater, where you must have great
physical energy," he says in a study decorated by images of comic-strip
hoodlums. "In theater it's a 24-hour day. . . . I am accustomed to this
kind of rhythm. In fact, writing relaxes me."
Craggy features, a bald dome and a longish fringe of white hair give the author
the look of an ancient eagle. His speech and movements are jovial and
deliberate. He's a chain-smoker, a habit he describes as "imbecilic."
"On the other hand, I have made it to 83," he says. "Maybe if I
quit cigarettes today, I would drop dead."
Camilleri, the son of a coast guard officer, was born
in Porto Empedocle in southwestern
Despite stereotypes of the island, more than half of
the best Italian writers of the last 120 years have been Sicilian, says Stephen
Sartarelli, an American poet who is Camilleri's translator. They have included Nobel laureate
Luigi Pirandello, a playwright, and Leonardo Sciascia,
a cerebral, politically engaged novelist.
This is the result of a cultivated intellectual class, a folk-tale tradition
and a dark reality that, as in Latin America or
"When you live in more violent surroundings, you have more moral decisions
to make," he says. "The Russians lived that in the 19th century.
Moral dilemmas create the most interesting literature."
But a sense of humor comes with the territory as well. Camilleri
has a playwright's ear for the language of subcultures, regions and historical
periods. He delights in the "verbal inventiveness" of early Italian
immigrants in the
His approach does not seem a prototype for mainstream success. He writes not in
standard Italian but a pastiche of Sicilian dialects, a language of his own
concoction.
"It's a difficult kind of Italian because it's very much my own
language," he says. "And it's even sometimes not very comprehensible
for my own Sicilian countrymen. . . . I confess there are also invented
words."
Only half in jest, Camilleri says the stardom of his
sleuth mystifies him. The middle-aged Montalbano is no action hero. Resentful
of authority but slow to violence, gruff but sentimental, he commands a
station-house ensemble featuring Catarella, an
endearingly bumbling front-desk officer, and Mimi Augello,
a skirt-chasing deputy commander.
Rather than cop-show realism, Camilleri lingers on
details of place, personality and meals, which are near-religious experiences
for Montalbano.
"I wanted a character who one could invite tranquilly to dinner knowing
that he would not talk about a case unless you asked him about it," he
said. "A person you can trust, who respects his word in friendship. With his private troubles, but nothing exceptional. Maybe it
was this lack of the exceptional that struck a chord in
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-andrea-camilleri3-2009feb03,0,2345679.story
The
ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (With Archives) on
Italia