2023-12-12 14:50:07
Ada D’Adamo died on April 1, 2023, a few weeks before her memoir, dedicated to the experience of raising a daughter suffering from a congenital brain malformation and her own battle against cancer, threw thousands of souls and consciences.
“Come d’aria” fused critics and audiences in a plebiscite which resulted in the victories of the Strega, Mondello, Super Mondello and Flaiano awards, a special mention at the Campiello and the uncommon figure of over 150,000 copies sold. A wave that still shows no signs of stopping, as evidenced by the victory at The Bridge which certifies its publication in the USA, and has overwhelmed with reflected affection a man who is experiencing the most difficult moment of his life, D’Adamo’s husband Alfredo Favi.
“Come d’aria” fused critics and audiences in a plebiscite which resulted in the victories of the Strega, Mondello, Super Mondello and Flaiano awards, a special mention at the Campiello and the uncommon figure of over 150,000 copies sold
From a certain point of view, deciding to contact him is not easy – you can have the feeling of violating something intimate once too often. But the awarding of an award that will take D’Adamo’s book overseas has a meaning that now concerns not only the individual, but the community.
In a recent interview with Time.news Chiara Valerio said that memory has the shape of a book: they seem like words dedicated to “Come d’aria”.
I have many other memories, but of course: my wife’s memory is a book. Which testifies to how she lived and how she set herself towards destiny. Through this book, even now, her presence does not cease to be and keep me in constant relationship with the ideas that she left behind.
“Come d’aria”, thanks also to The Bridge Prize, will be translated into English: as difficult as it is, you are perhaps the only one who can imagine with a good degree of approximation what your wife would have thought of it.
Ada didn’t even imagine she would enter the top 12 of the Strega, she was surprised to hear about it just before leaving us. Everything that happened around “Come d’aria” from that day onwards would have astonished her. In fact, she didn’t even know whether to publish her manuscript or not: her friends convinced her, especially Elena Stancanelli who had been pushing her to write for years, her analyst and myself. It was “the others” who believed it.
The private becoming public is a theme of our time: what changes when it is not technology – through social exposure – but literature that makes it so?
I don’t see any thought behind social media, posts are burned the moment a photo is published, a sentence is typed or a like is placed. They last the breath of an instant, the time to become visible, because something else happens immediately afterwards. What is attractive on social media is first of all the simple perception of an image. A book, on the other hand, is a text that makes you imagine. And when it becomes a message it is because it does not simply represent a life, but a thought about life.
Another strong theme: within what limits does talking about pain have a social value?
Pain becomes social when its message is political. The idea for Ada’s book germinated from the letter written to Corrado Augias, and published in Repubblica in 2008, in which she denounced the lack of state support for families with disabled children. There was dignity in those words, they contained a very strong sign that concerned all women. When suffering goes beyond the personal it can take on a collective value. This was what struck the media, the voters of the awards and also many young people, such as the high school students who at La Sapienza University, in the context of a Telefono Rosa conference, recently indicated “Come d’aria” their choice book. A certificate that struck my sensitivity more than others.
In recent months you have, against your will, entered the Italian literary world as a protagonist, and not only that, as a witness: are you thinking of writing something about your experience, a memoir of memory?
No, because I don’t know how to do it: the language I know and practice professionally is that of advertising. It’s true, I am the author of the cover of “Come d’aria” and perhaps I could express myself using my codes, but at this stage I haven’t even processed the loss. It will take longer than normal, because I’m still too busy defending my wife’s thoughts and being present where she should have been. And above all, I want to avoid my feelings becoming a yardstick for reading her: we must only talk about her work. I protect a legacy.
The Bridge pushes the boundaries of your wife’s writing: does she have a dedication for this award?
Don’t laugh, I dedicate it to the TNT Group, as the circle of friends who gathered around the book after Ada’s passing jokingly defined themselves. They are the people, whose names I don’t want to name now, who supported “Come d’aria”, brought it to the theater and around Italy and, together with the Elliot publishing house, made sure that a small thing made money enormous visibility. TNT is Alan Ford’s group, not surprisingly an advertising graphic designer in the comic, and is made up of bad boys who get up to all sorts of things.
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