School,
Novels, Poetry and Street Photography
Interview
with Simone Consorti
by
Maria Teresa De Donato
Today I am happy to host
again my colleague-author, Simone Consorti, whose book review I already
presented some time ago, that is I declare you husband and death, a work
with a decidedly provocative title.
Simone's artistic
production is varied and includes novels, poetry collections, and even street
photography.
In this interview, we
will, therefore, try to get to know him through his works and his art.
MTDD: Hi Simone and
welcome to my Virtual Cultural Salon.
SC:
Hello everyone and thanks for the invitation
MTDD: Simone, why don't
you start by introducing yourself to our readers and telling us a little about
yourself: studies, profession, and anything else you would like to share with
our readers?
SC:
I want to think that they are mainly my passions. I am, therefore, a
photographer, a writer, and a traveler. As a profession, however, I have been
teaching for more than twenty years and teaching is the only one of my passions
that gives me food. I live a bit isolated, in certain periods I almost led the
life of a misanthrope. When I don't go to school I spend my days on the beach,
where I walk for hours, and at my desk, where I'm currently writing a bit of
everything, from dialogues to short stories to a parody of Zeno's Conscience.
I had many projects in mind, but the current situation has led me to a reductio
ad unum and the only goal I have been left with is to finish and publish a
quality book.
MTDD: How did your
passion for writing start?
SC:
The first book I read was Tom Sawyer. I immediately wanted to be the
protagonist of the story, capable of living those adventures; at the same time,
I realized that, even if I simply fantasized about them, without experiencing
them, I would be fine. At twelve I felt that I wanted to write and that writing
was the only way I had to live more lives.
MTDD: Has your being a
high school professor and interacting with your students every day in your
opinion paved the way for this business of yours and even inspired you in some
cases?
SC: Teaching
has to do with acting. You take on a role, you talk all the time, everyone is
looking at you. Sometimes you don't wonder what you leave behind, but only
whether the boys had a good time with you, whether they laughed, whether they
were inspired by you. The classroom, in addition to being the auditorium of my
monologues, is also the source of many of my stories. I dedicated a novel to my
students, initially entitled "I don't even hate you" and then
published with the title "On the run from school and towards the
world", where the speaker is Valerio, a boy who hates adults. The
sentence at the beginning of the book is: “Too childish to understand your
world, too mature to accept it”. That book, for me, is a kind of auto da fé (=
act of faith) because I analyzed myself from the perspective of my students.
MTDD:
The titles of your books are always unique. Not only do they immediately catch
the reader's attention, but they also reveal, often with sharp irony, the depth
of the message you wish to communicate. The man who writes 'help' on water,
published by Baldini and Castoldi in 1999, precisely reflects this desire of
yours. Someone has defined it as an impressionistic book "with temporal and
spatial changes".
Would you like to talk
about it?
SC:
That book is a delusion. You could edit the episodes in so many other ways. It
is a voice that goes here and there as if it were talking to itself, aware that
everything is aquatic, destined to be erased. A great quality of the book is
its self-mockery. Several people told me that they laughed, unable to control
themselves. Stefano Benni also told me, in one of the most gratifying and
surprising calls I have received in my life. "Have they ever told you that
you have a great sense of humor?" thus began.
MTDD:
In 2008, a few years after the release of your first book, you published Sterile
come il tuo amore (Sterile As Your Love) (Besa, 2008). In the synopsis, we
read in part "a bizarre story that takes place mainly in the medical
offices of andrologists, gynecologists, psychologists, including laboratory
analyzes, sterile containers, test tubes, pregnancy tests, in the presence of
white coats, nosy nurses, Freudian armchairs that they host psychoanalysts who
cite Dante, in short, everything needed to demonstrate how even an inert
spermatozoon can procreate, through artificial insemination, a child over whose
name the parents have already begun to quarrel."
This statement sounds pretty
much like a sentence taken from Dante's Inferno. In reality, it is a detailed
description of a modern reality which, while tearing some smiles and even some
laughter, arouses many worries.
Why did you decide to
tackle these issues?
SC:
The story starts from a personal story. The difficulty in having a child led me
to imagine what could have happened if I had stayed with my partner. The basic
idea is that the problem of a couple is not sterility, which with today's
techniques, can be overcome, but the lack of respect and mutual esteem. In the
book, divided into four chapters, He and She speak alternately, so through the
streams of consciousness, we witness what they truly think of each other. A
disaster!
MTDD: On
the run from school and towards the world (Hacca, 2009) is a title that
reflects a state of mind that most of us experienced when we were young.
Has something changed in
recent decades or is the gap between school preparation and real life and the
world of work still, in fact, boundless?
SC:
My protagonist was an insecure rebel, who saw the professors as the enemy and
contrasted him with a freakkettone who had a very alternative beach
establishment. Without generalizing, but the kids today are tamer and
homologated, compared to a few years ago. You rarely meet the rebel or simply
the voice out of the chorus, capable of criticizing or contesting. I would like
to go back and talk about it again in a new story which, for now, has as its
working title "Scholastic Year".
[NOTE: “Anno Scolastico” –
The Author has willingly misspelled the word “Anno”, which is “Year” with “Hanno”,
that is “they HAVE”, which is a mistake some people do when writing. In Italian
language the two words are, in fact, pronounced the same way]
MTDD: As a teacher, how
do you try to fill this gap to prepare your students for real life?
SC:
I like to create a relationship of dialogue. I consider it my goal to make them
feel good and, first of all, leave them with good memories. Secondly, I like to
stimulate them. Rewards come when a guy reads a book or sees a movie you
mentioned and chooses you to talk about it.
MTDD: A
tempo di sesso (Besa, 2012), On this side of death
(Besa, 2015), Othello, let me introduce Ophelia to you (L’erudita, 2018),
and The Rain in Krakow (Ensemble, 2019) are your other novels.
Can you describe the
themes you have dealt with in these works?
SC:
The first two books are similar: stories of girls fleeing oppressive
conditions. They are enjoyable novels set in reality, real investigations. The
Rain in Krakow, on the other hand, is an escape of a different kind, a
degradation, a catabasis of integrated men who turn into vagabonds and beggars
but who, however, manage to accept themselves in the end. “Today I give myself
a gift/today I forget who I am/and even if I have thrown away my life/whoever I
am I forgive myself.” Rain in Krakow is a fable and a parable. A book
not very narrative and perhaps not very enjoyable but which I am very fond of.
MTDD: I
Declare You Husband and Death is your latest collection of short stories
you published in 2020. I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing it and I
loved it. In part of the review, I stated, "A profound connoisseur and
observer of the human soul, the author, who at times also reveals his poetic
and nostalgic side, seems to affectionately make fun of the reader, leaving him/her
with reassurance or anxiety – depending on his/her personal view and perception
– that "The afternoon knows things that the morning cannot even
imagine."
This statement of mine
comes from my perception that you are not only multifaceted, but also in some respects
unpredictable, ironic, and gifted with a great capacity for observation and
analysis of characters and situations.
Do you recognize yourself
in this description or how would you define yourself otherwise?
SC:
I think that more than anything else I have a couple of qualities as a writer
and as a man: the ability to observe and listen. I think it's about putting
yourself at the right distance, without being indifferent but without even
ending up too much in the middle. I love to tell stories that have happened to
me or have been told to me, therefore starting from a real element, to wander.
Writing short stories, in which everything is held and where everything has a
link and a meaning, gives me the idea of syntropy...
MTDD: What can you tell
us about your poetry collections?
SC:
My poetic world is very compact. We always find ourselves either in a war
cemetery or in front of the sea. The season is always suspended autumn. The
tone is ironic. The rhyme is alternates and occurs in the ending. My poems form
a closed world, very musical and light-hearted. You can penetrate them starting
from a cadence and I myself write to you only while walking if that cadence
enters my head:
“It
will also be a paradox
but
just nowhere else
on
earth
lies
so much peace
like
in a war cemetery”.
MTDD:
In your bio, I read that you are also engaged in street photography.
How was this passion of
yours born?
SC:
Coincidentally. The writing wasn't enough for me. Publishers didn't publish me.
An SLR was on offer. From there I first started photographing models and
understanding that it was not my thing. Then to steal moments of life, hiding
and hiding my face behind my camera, one of the things I really love to do.
MTDD: Any plans for the
future?
SC:
An exhibition in Mexico, poetry books translated in Chile and published in
Argentina. Representing my plays. Releasing my book, different from all the
other writings before and so much more that I would rather not tell you,
otherwise you might understand that, more than projects, these are illusions.
MTDD: Thanks
Simone for being with us today.
We wish to remind our
readers how they can contact you and/or buy your publications?
SC:
For those interested in getting to know me better, I can be found under my
name, on various social networks. On a special page of the site, which my
student Alessandra made me, there are links to books, which can also be
purchased through Amazon, Ibs, etc. My site is currently this here: https://sconsorti1.wixsite.com/simoneconsorti.
It used to be www.simoneconsorti.com, but they shut it down when I stopped
paying the annual fee!
