From 24 February in bookstores for Longanesi the new updated and expanded edition of the bestseller released in 2012 and which has since sold over one million copies
“I wrote in the morning, I corrected in the afternoon, and in the evening I wondered who would ever care about a story that seemed too similar to many others and at the same time too unique to become universal. On July 31 I had finished it and it was only after having sketched the last scene that the sore throat passed and I finally burst into tears ». Ten years have passed since that liberating cry and that story – “too similar to many others and at the same time too unique to become universal” -, which just then became a book, actually mattered to many. One million and 300 thousand copies sold from spring 2012 to today, an uninterrupted flow of readers who never stop recognizing themselves, becoming passionate, moved, then even a film, directed by Marco Bellocchio. And a notch marked in Italian publishing history: having known before the others intercept the path that fiction would take shortly thereafter, and that it traveled towards autofiction. The story of oneself, getting involved.
That book, which is now ten years old, is Make beautiful dreams: Massimo Gramellini wrote it and it is his story. That of a child who at the age of nine loses his mother. The story of a little boy, and then of an adult, who lives “with a splinter planted in his heart”. And then about this: of the fact that, at almost fifty years old, that grown-up child finally discovers the truth that perhaps in the depths of his heart he has always known, intuited. That his mother did not die of a heart attack, as they made him believe in a perfectly orchestrated conspiracy of affections family members, but he chose to leave, letting himself fall into the void on a snow-filled New Year’s Eve, in their Turin home. When he came out, Make beautiful dreams it was like a stone that hits and moves the water and today, that its trajectory is not yet over, it returns to the bookshop for Longanesi in a new edition, Ten years later.
A different edition: Gramellini re-read his book, relived it, working on additions and subtractions to account for these ten years. Of the past time that has changed him and of the mark that his many readers (and detractors, too) have left on the book. Above all, he added a very personal epilogue as well a chapter, a new ending, which, he writes, in order to be conceived “it was necessary for the rest of the story to come out first” (here an excerpt). Because he tells how that book was born, almost by chance, when the publisher to whom Gramellini proposed his personal story as an argument to introduce an essay he had in mind understands that that story, precisely that, is itself the book and not the book. introduction of something else.
Giuseppe Strazzeri, Longanesi’s editorial director, is that publisher “with the usual kind tone”: he remembers everything about that day in the publishing house, except the unseasonable mosquito that Gramellini tells about in the book. A decade later, he thinks about his role as “mediator”: “I think the author already had the book in mind without knowing it, we helped him bring it out into the open”. Make beautiful dreams, then, it was a challenge: «Gramellini was already an author of essays, but the territory of autofiction, of the memoir, was still little explored in our country». Bet won: this “novel that does not respond to the rules of the novel”, that mix fiction with real life, today it boasts of never having seen a paperback edition in ten years, thanks to a sales trend that does not flex.
A result that blends editorial intuition with the author’s ability to reach his readers directly by opening his painful private space to them without ever feeling sorry for himself, without doing and getting discounts. Then there is the unpredictable alchemy, word of mouth, that thing that every publisher dreams of but that no one can create at the table, because the bestseller formula was never invented: “At a certain point – confirms Strazzeri – it happens that a book it escapes from everyone’s hands: author, publisher, booksellers, and you can do nothing but print as many copies as possible ». Make beautiful dreams it is one of those magical books: promoted from below, by those who, reading them, find themselves catapulted into it. And maybe he writes it to the author: Massimo Gramellini he tells of the letters that have come to him after the release of Make beautiful dreams, reports of other lives and other pains that many wanted to share with him. And of other small and big discoveries made after the book came out, of the stories he stirred up (old school friends, lifelong friends or unsuspected correspondents: it was also Raffaella Carrà who wrote him a note, so to speak). This is why, today, this re-read and expanded edition that turns the cards again with equal force: “The idea – explains Strazzeri – comes from Gramellini himself: in ten years he has made an important path of acceptance of himself, of his history, and the readers have somehow made the story of the novel continue even beyond the end ».
Not just empathy: like other unannounced bestsellers, too Make beautiful dreams aroused discontent. “Too dull, a victimist, an exhibitionist”: Gramellini replies. Then, ten years later, there remains the strength of a story that speaks directly, at times unlikely if we did not know that it is very true, of a pain that cuts in two. Of a child, of his very present yet elusive mother, of a father who tries a lot and makes mistakes. Of supporting actors who fill the pages with truth and warmth: Godmother, My Uncle, the grandmothers, Giorgio and Ginetta, the neighbor child cheering Juventus, the schoolmate Rosolino (“a guy who ate everything, even candy wrappers and ballpoint caps already bitten by others”), the mustachioed and anaffective nanny Mita “who had been in the service of a countess of the hill who was related to the Lambs and lived as a father like a relegation and me like a tragedy “(we also smile a lot, in this book that tells the greatest pain).
And of readers who, most of all, explain with facts what the strength of a book means. Like the old lady who is on the verge of death whispers to her best friend: “The first person I’m going to look for in the afterlife will be the mother of Make beautiful dreams. I don’t know her, but she will pronounce the name of her son and she will come to meet me ».
Live online with the author
«Make beautiful dreams» by Massimo Gramellini, released in 2012 and become a bestseller, is back today in bookstores in a new revised and enhanced edition: «Make beautiful dreams. Ten years later “(Longanesi, pp. 240, and 12,90). Massimo Gramellini is deputy director and columnist of the «Corriere». After having conducted with Fabio Fazio «Che fuori tempo che fa», in 2016 he leads on Raitre «The words of the week». He is the author of essays and novels including, for Longanesi, «The last line of fairy tales» (2010), «The magic of a good morning» (2014), Avrò cura di te (with Chiara Gamberale, 2014), «C ‘once upon a time now “(2020) and for Solferino” Before you come into the world “(2019). Tuesday 1 March, at 6 pm, exactly ten years after the book’s release, Gramellini will be live on the illi febbraio.it Facebook page to tell about “Make beautiful dreams” and his ten years, with him there will be Francesca Michielin and Federico Taddia .
February 23, 2022 (change February 23, 2022 | 21:44)
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