Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Blossom S. Kirschenbaum / Stefano Benni
include Prima o poi l’amore arriva, 1981; Ballate, 1991; and Blues in
sedici, 1998. Stories collected in 1987 in Il bar sotto il mare (The Bar
Beneath the Sea) established him as a literary star; later collections
include L’ultima lacrima, 1994 and Bar Sport Duemila, 1997. Bold,
brilliant, innovative in creating new worlds, widely considered one
of Italy’s foremost and best-selling novelists (Baol, 1990; La compagnia
dei Celestini, 1992; Elianto, 1996; Spiriti, 2000, Achille piè veloce, 2003),
Benni is steeped in American literature and popular culture and
has invented new endings to, for instance, Moby-Dick—he tells the
story from a whale’s point of view. Conversations with Goffredo
Fofi were published under the title Leggere, scrivere, disobbedire in
1999. As David Ward wrote, Benni “sees the comedian not only as
a purveyor of humor, but also as an agent of political change.” Benni
has been influenced by Italo Calvino’s Le cosmicomiche and by his
friend Gianni Celati’s early novels—and also by Giovanni Boccaccio,
Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Carlo Emilio Gadda. Benni wrote and directed
a 1989 film, Musica per Vecchi Animali, whose cast included
Dario Fò. His novel La compagnia dei Celestini, aptly said to be in the
style of “Edgar Allan Disney,” has been adapted into an animatedcartoon
version broadcast by RAI. Also playwright and performer,
Benni in 1998 joined musician Paolo Damiani in Sconcerto, a program
of poetry and jazz; with musician Umberto Petrin he staged
Danzando Lolita and Misterioso (2005), the former referring to Vladimir
Nabokov’s novel and the latter about the life of jazz pianist
Thelonious Monk; other stage-works followed; L’ultimo astronave is
currently touring. Until 2004 he gave seminars about the imagination,
a selection from which has been televised by Dario Fò, Franca
Rame, and Jacopo Fò. Lately he has appeared with his son, born in
1988. Though Terra! (1983, 1985), a futuristic science-fiction novel,
when it first came out in English, was not a best-seller, Margherita
Dolcevita (political satire in the guise of teen fantasy) and Saltatempo
(Timeskipper in English), translated by Anthony Shugaar and brought
out by Europa Editions, have drawn favorable reviews. Of the latter
the publisher says “Timeskipper sees and foresees the epochal
events of his era from postwar reconstruction to the birth of television—from
the golden age of rock’n’roll to the revolutionary sixties
and the turbulent seventies. These events are tenderly offset by his
own private experiences: his first love, his first job, leaving home,
hilariously wild adventures with oddball acquaintances.” In November
2008 bookstores will be carrying his latest work, Miss
Gallassia.
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