It's a sweet book this one, the second tome of Letteratura e Giornalismo, Literature and
Why this book is sweet? Because the problematics treated are italians and I found, reading it, all the domesticity of our country.
The importance of magazines and newsmagazine was great also for the italian territory for trying to create unity and also the possibility, thanks to an accessibile price of giving a product that everyone should have read with pleasure.
The journalist was the person who reported, the filter between reality and the world outside, the one telling a fact, the mediator between reality and his/her readers.
At first the book starts with a question: is it distant literature and journalism? Conclusions are interesting. Let's remember that Ernest Hemingway started his profession as a reporter before to giving up, becoming a great writer with a journalistic writing-style.
This profession is compared to the one of priesthood in the book.
The book dedicates an entire chapter at mr. Dino Terra a journalist and writer, culturally influential in grade to report thanks to his literary reportages the mood of Italians thanks to his interviews. He tried all his best to share with his readers an elevated culture. Journalism meant to him ethic and civil engagement.
A chapter is dedicated to the literature in the 1800s, journalism and humor, with examples as Carlo Collodi with his Pinocchio, Dickens with Oliver Twist or David Copperfield and wagons of other books; these writers and reporters (Dickens was a journalist) tried their best for reporting social conditions and injustices without to lose that sense of wit and humor, characterizations of people and situations, giving us a perfect picture of the society were they lived in.
Camus will introduce us the second post-war and France a country where the thinker denounced a cryptic language. A society, the french one unable to reflect on its errors, and a big problem was the use of rethoric for not saying anything and for launching smoke on the eyes of readers!
Journalism must be, for Camus, vivid, clear, it must pays attention to the reality, it means ideas and thoughts. Camus insists that optimism is a great choice, but always accompanied by critic sense.
A chapter will treat sexual freedom and consumerism and the polemic of Pier Paolo Pasolini against the political establishment with his ferocious articles released in Il Corriere della Sera against the Democrazia Cristiana and its leaders.
Children started also to be interested by the arrival on the scene of various magazines dedicated to them, focusing on the society and it's mutations.
Highly recommended.
I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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