Interview with author Enrico Mattioli
Tonight our guest is Enrico Mattioli and from Rome. He is a writer and he writes articles on his blog www.enricomattioli.com We have conducted an interview with him about his new book "On my generation".
What inspires you to synthesize your thoughts into a speech by one of your characters?
Sometimes it happens, but in general my characters do not speak through my thoughts. They have their own lives and thoughts that arise when I'm creating them. It also affects the way they relate to the environment around.
How important is political and social passion in your opinion?
When I write a book, not much. The narration is more important; everything is in function of it. It is often thought that the writer and the protagonist are the same person, but that is not the case. Use of real details but I do not report. I'm just an observer.
Why did you want to write a book "On my generation"?
I was an adolescent when the great ideals of the past had fallen and I wanted to tell that period. The characters of On my generation, having no principles, stick to music, football, money, sterile success, and defend themselves with cynicism, but cynic betrays them: a group of friends want to revenge an old friend, who has become an important politician, who used them and then abandoned them.
What is your key message? What do you want to spread? How would you like to gauge that you are successful in this pursuit?
One of On my generation's characters is called Santillana and is a fan of Beatles and John Lennon in particular. Even though the Beatles were the biggest mass communication phenomenon of all time, the aspect that Santillana highlights is the story of Pete Best, the first drummer of the Beatles, who was replaced shortly before the big hit. The life of common people resembles that of Pete Best, not that of the Beatles as a mythological entity. We are all Pete Best, his story teaches us more than anything else. The book is the story of a generation afflicted by Pete Best's disease.
The message, in spite of everything, is to remain itself.
Do you plan to write a sequel to this?
Today I answer no, but I would like to be forced to write it. Greetings to the readers of TheCrazyMind.
