(by Paolo Petroni)
ROBERTO COTRONEO, NIENTE DI
PERSONALE (published by LA NAVE DI TESEO, pp. 378 - 19.00
euros).
In this book by Roberto Cotroneo, half novel and half memoir,
Rome in the 1980s is described as "the salt, the essence of this
country. That vitality that gives you the strength to live and -
this goes without saying - to risk, look far ahead, to improve
oneself, to love".
The author begins with his own story and that of his family
to reflect on the past and present and the 30-year deterioration
of a society in which "managers have taken the upper hand
because intellectuals did not become the leading class" and
people buy technology, "a screen, a battery, miniature
processors. Well made, of course, but empty", since everything
that makes them work - the contents, servers, fibers, etc - are
the property of and managed by someone who we known little or
nothing about.
And everyone simply writes and watches without actually
seeing or hearing anything anymore, thanks to what he calls "the
most powerful system for removing consciences".
Though the book is partially an indignant complaint, it also
investigates and collects human and scientific data, remembering
and reflecting, it is more an attempt to take stock of the
situation while being guided by a certain melancholic nostalgia
for what once was with a bit or irony mixed in.
It looks at the Rome of Moravia and Fellini, the office of
the Italian weekly L'Espresso, where "values and priorities"
were what was important and where Cotroneo entered as a
journalist in 1984.
The story moves from one in which attempts were made to find
out the reality on the ground - to denounce and change it - to a
technological passivity that has almost no links to reality
anymore.
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