The book by the editorialist of the «Corriere» is out on 30 September for Feltrinelli. Famous cases and forgotten stories seen by an information protagonist
It happened many, too many years ago. Almost every night, after closing the first edition, the deputy editor called some young editors into his office on the first floor. He had their articles on the table, which had just gone to print. Many passages were already underlined with a yellow highlighter. They were the ones too many. «Dry, dry». He accompanied the sentence by making a gesture with his right hand, as if he were holding an imaginary cloth and rubbing it on a wet surface. Smoking like a beast, at the time it was still used like this, he told of his first experiences, of how the five lines you fall in love with and would never cut from your piece are never really so fundamental. In a profession like this, he said, you have to get used to giving the right weight to things and people. And above all, train yourself in the discipline of looking at them from above. Because the world will go on always and in any case, even without our five lines so precious to us.
How much love for journalism, in Carlo Verdelli. And what a miracle, to see it arrive still intact up to here, until it permeates itself Acid (Feltrinelli), a book that is not only the summary of a life spent writing and having people written, inventing new magazines and directing newspapers, but it is above all a declaration of faith in this profession. Despite the thousand cigarettes, the thousands of kilometers, the nights you don’t sleep, despite missed appointments, wounds and perennial feelings of guilt towards those around you. «Because there is more, much more, in the work of a journalist. For example, the desire to open a door, each time as if it were the first, and not give peace until you understand what is behind them, people or stories that they are, without neglecting any detail, with the permanent doubt of having left out some element, with the humility to start looking for it again, e rummaging, throwing official truths into the air, breaking boxes and the boxes to whoever is in front of you. At the cost of being brutal ».
And how to explain all this passion, all this urgency and effort, to those who thrive on social networks by raising their finger, issuing their final sentences every day, wishing the disappearance of newspapers, beautiful or ugly, without understanding that they are the first to needing it, without ever having experienced that sensation of putting on the page and abandoning a text to its fate, knowing full well that the next day everything will be redone. Perhaps, the “even brutal Italian chronicles” of Acid they can help you understand. With their rigor, with the essential words that let the facts speak but reveal the author’s effort, his obsession with inlaying, digging, fitting the right one in the place where it should be, and then starting over each time.
“Whatever comes after, nothing or God, it is very likely that Enzo Tortora do not rest in peace ». It is the perfect attack of a perfect piece on “one of the best known and most scarred Italians”, written in 2013 thirty years after his arrest, a story that is still relevant today because it continues to shout revenge above all to men and then to God, the milestone on which a fideistic conception was built not of journalism but of the judiciary that has reigned for years, with results under the eyes of all. There’s no scoop, there’s just one rewind the tape, retrace each step, every thread of that ignoble story, study and then study again. And then, only when you have made it yours, tell it by polishing circumstances and details long gone in the memory, to prevent them from being lost.
The first section talks about cases now closed, of people who have become famous for what they have done or suffered, the acid couple, the father of Motta Visconti who exterminated his family, the live death of Mauro Rostagno, another precluded example of investigations with precooked theses, up to the death without justice of Giuseppe Uva. Each of them is accompanied by a final and often bitter gloss, which testifies to the need to follow the events to the last, to tie every thread as much as possible. The last two, Souls in the stream e Places, they tell less known lives, or now forgotten. The story of Antonia who was Antonio, “A being housed in a wrong body”, is a proof of what was said above, every story is worth telling, as long as you get into it, make it your own, “it starts early for them, the trans, the fatigue of living raised to power, especially if they soon sense that they are out of place ». Live the suffering and hope of people, as Verdelli does in the chapter dedicated to the child disputed between two parents who hate each other, let them speak to the reader through the writer. Even at the cost of hurting yourself, feeling anger and carrying ugly images that never go away. Anything, just to make the reader a little happier, no one else. It is life, it is the profession, it is the newspapers, including the Corriere, where Carlo has returned after having traveled around the world.
For this, Acid it’s not for everyone. It is not suitable for those who believe that the boundaries of the universe coincide with the boundaries of their own head, for those that opinion is everything and facts are just a detail, for those who have exchanged an ephemeral fame on television or social fooling around with the essence. of this profession. It is a book for those who still believe it, for those who believed it. How much time, and how much life, from those nights spent drying. Unfortunately, even how many goodbyes. There is no longer one of those young editors who were waiting to have the pieces corrected, a poignant chapter is dedicated to her, her name was Maria Grazia, next November 19th it is already twenty years old, and how quickly they passed. There is no longer even Gian Piero Dell’Acqua, to whom the book is dedicated. It was the editor-in-chief who cut off Carlo’s five lines, his teacher, one of the many unknown soldiers of the editorial offices who destroy themselves with work for others, and without them none of us would be here.
But reading Acid, we understand that Verdelli would do it again, his journey into this world of madmen who still delude themselves to be able to stop time, with that obsolete formula of the visa is printed. It was worth it, it’s still worth it. Because every day there is something to tell, there is a title to fix. In this profession that makes us damn but we would like it to never end there is always a novelty and a new challenge. How can it also be to write the book that collects and updates the best articles of the person who taught you to write.
The meeting at the Turin Motor Show
Carlo Verdelli will present his book «Acido» with Walter Veltroni on Sunday 17 October at the Turin Book Fair (3.30 pm, Spazio Foyer).
Columnist of “Corriere della Sera”, Carlo Verdelli (Milan, 1957) was deputy director of “Epoca” and “Corriere”, he directed “Sette”, “Vanity Fair”, “Gazzetta dello Sport” and “la Repubblica” and he was the first editorial director for Rai’s information offer. He has published «Beautiful dreams are not remembered» (Garzanti, 2014) and «Roma non perdona. How Rai has recovered politics “(Feltrinelli, 2019).
September 27, 2021 (change September 27, 2021 | 21:48)
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