People standing close in line, card games with neighbors, the extraordinary hospitality that is so different from American customs. Salvatore Scibona, the Italian-American writer who The New Yorker considers one of the country’s 20 best fiction writers under 40, speaks about rediscovering a world that lived in the stories of his grandparents. He told that story in The End, a novel about Italian immigrants in America during the 1950s. According to Scibona – a member of Aspen Institute Italia’s “Italian Talent Abroad” network – Italian culture lives more in people than in monuments, and counterbalances the individualism that is still the cornerstone of the American mythos.
Why did you decide to write a book about Italian immigrants in America after WWII?
In my method, I follow the most urgent questions that come from my subconscious. When I started writing I did not have a specific aim, I had no setting, no characters, basically nothing except a few details. However, little by little these details came together and took form around a period of life, not mine, rather that of my grandparents. That period was just after they immigrated. I’d heard them speak of it often, and it seemed like a time that belonged to a world that was completely lost. My grandparents were European, but my parents did not speak their families’ languages – neither Italian nor Polish.
Such strong culture had completely disappeared in just one generation, and by the time I was born, that past was just a memory. The only way I had to touch and relive it was to reinvent it. My education played an important role in this process. I studied at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico where there is an interdisciplinary program that focuses on the cornerstone works of Western literature, philosophy, mathematics and economics. In other words, Western thought starting with Homer. This gave me the opportunity to feel like a part of a world that connects both sides of the Atlantic. On the other hand, my Italian adventure started with a Fulbright scholarship. Among about 30 Fulbright scholars, I was the only one of Italian descent and the only one who had never been to Italy. I had to learn everything from scratch.
What were your impressions during your first trip to Italy?
During the Fulbright experience, I spent time in Rome and Catania. My initial thoughts on Italy were quite different from reality. On the other hand, I was 24 and it was my first time outside the United States. My first impression of Italy came from standing in line: the people waiting in line were far too close to each other for my standards. When I saw someone so close to me, I was amazed, I thought they wanted to tell me something. In the end, this became a motif of my novel. The individual dimension is given more space in the US compared to Italy. Americans have more physical space, and I believe that this is symbolic of more complex things such as social and economic factors.
In the past, Sicilians immigrants saw themselves as part of a family and the individual sphere overlapped and coincided with that of the family. Fortune came to them as a group, not as individuals. This is the opposite of American ideals, based on individualism. We know that the idea that anyone can ride off on a horse and seek his or her fortune is a false myth as in reality the pioneers of the West moved in groups.
In Italy, all you need to do to see the importance of human interaction is take a walk. There are often knots of people, gathered in groups of six, seven or eight. I didn’t expect this, but it is lovely. The difference both fascinated and frightened me. It wasn’t easy for me to get used to this cultural diversity. Once, when I was a guest in Sicily, I watched while three elderly women fought over who should wash my clothes. I was terribly embarrassed. From another point of view, it was magnificent. It was wonderful to feel so welcomed, wonderful to feel warm, generous hospitality.
Is Italy still a source of inspiration for a writer in the way it was at the time of the Grand Tour? Is it hard for a writer to measure up to such a strong and important past?
The people I know, especially writers, are cultural tourists for the most part. There is nothing superficial about it, but their ties with Italy are related to a street or a monument. It was different for me. When I lived in Rome, even though I was near the Vatican, I never visited the Sistine Chapel. It was silly of me, but in my opinion, ties are made up of the people you know, of the people you see every day who speak a language that I was once unable to understand. When I was in Rome, I often played cards with a neighbor – that interaction is a much sharper memory for me than any monument.
From the point of view of writing, I think that Americans are freer in describing what they see, and that they do so in a more direct way. I think Italian art is more conditioned, that there must be a dialogue with the past and the past is so enormous that it is frightening. When I buy a novel in the United States, there is a cover and the text. In an Italian novel, there is an introduction, a preface and then, fifty pages later, the actually story.
There is great wealth in Italian culture, but there are many very talented people who have to go abroad to develop their projects. It’s a complex situation and therefore it’s very interesting. My education and family led me to learn about Italy and gave me the enthusiasm to discover its great culture. I like writing with knowledge about the past, about origins, about literature and philosophy and religion. And perhaps it’s precisely because I’m an American that this past stimulates me so much, rather than imprisoning me.
