 Giap/digest #29 - Burlesquoni, Tony Blair and Us - 24 June 2005
1. Burlesquoni, Tony Blair and Us. New Features and Reviews from the UK
2. Switters + Wu Ming 1 = New Thing!
3. 54. Download, Enjoy... and Buy for Your Friends
4. Dirt Cheap... and Yours for Good!
NEW REVIEWS AND FEATURES
Red Pepper is a left-wing/green/feminist monthly magazine published in the UK (http://www.redpepper.org.uk/). Issue 131, June 2005, features a two-page article/interview on Wu Ming and 54. Ben Skelton sent us challenging questions, we answered them collectively.
An extract: '... the mockery of Berlusconi’s media and political excesses in 54. Set in 1954, the new novel uses extracts from the contemporary Italian press to fill in the historical details: McCarthyism is unravelling in the US; European and American armies are fighting communist forces in Vietnam and Korea… Media bias is most evident in the description of events inside Italy:
"THE COMMUNIST MANOEUVRE TO STIR UP THE MASSES AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT"
"The left plan to undermine the new Prime Minster despite his moves to combat poverty"
"Speculating on the incidents they THEMSELVES provoked they are trying to create schisms in the governing body …"
Wu Ming explain: "Berlusconi’s language is full of the stereotypical anti-communism which was the rhetorical backbone of 1950s political discourse." They add that 1954 was the year television arrived in Italy – television is Berlusconi, and one of 54’s twin plot lines details the misadventures of a deluxe TV set as it travels around Italy, passing from owner to owner. The set doesn’t work: eventually, it is revealed that its internal mechanism has been replaced with a hoard of heroin. The metaphor could not be more explicit.'
Complete text: http://www.wumingfoundation.com/italiano/54/redpepper_54.htm
***
Today (June 24th). The Independent, one of the most prestigious British dailies, features an enthusiastic review of 54, penned by Boyd Tonkin.
An extract: 'Yesterday, Tony Blair outlined his blueprint for Europe. One private corner of this vision clearly involves spending vacation after vacation in lovely parts of Italy. Long may the master of the political bella figura continue to enjoy il bel paese. But, next time he packs for Tuscany or Sardinia, he may wish to take along an Italian novel newly published here. It's a droll, ingenious comedy-thriller, packed with clever gags and boasting a cast that includes Alfred Hitchcock, Marshal Tito and - in pride of place - the supremely dapper Cary Grant. Perfect holiday reading, some might think. Then again, since it also tries to explain how Europe's postwar quest for social justice was thwarted by rampant consumerism and a surrender to American power - some might not.'
Complete text: http://www.wumingfoundation.com/italiano/54/independent_54.htm
 SWITTERS + WU MING 1 = NEW THING!
In case you want to listen to Wu Ming 1 readin'/rappin'/muezzin-chantin' from his solo novel New Thing (2004, as-yet-unpublished in other languages), and jammin' with radical improvisational group Switters (Gianni Gebbia on sax; Vincenzo Vasi on bass, vocals and theremin; Francesco Cusa on drums)...
One of last Autumn performances was recorded @ La Palma Club, Rome, by a crew of Italy's public radio (third channel) and is going to be broadcast on MONDAY JULY 4TH, h. 10 pm Central Europe (9 pm UK, 4 pm US East, 1 pm US West, Tue 4 am Australia West, Tue 6 am Australia East).
Web streaming: http://www.radio.rai.it/radio3/ascolta.cfm
Useful links:
Gianni Gebbia, Sicily's Saxophone Colossus:
http://www.giannigebbia.com/
Francesco Cusa, Drummer and Buster Keaton devotee:
http://www.francescocusa.tk/
Improvvisatore Involontario (Italian improvisational music record label)
http://www.improvvisatoreinvolontario.com/
"This tale goes way beyond free jazz..."
DOWNLOAD, ENJOY... AND BUY FOR YOUR FRIENDS
54, English text, now available at:
http://www.wumingfoundation.com/italiano/downloads.shtml
 Six years have passed since the first publication of Q, and we've come to the conclusion that our books would sell much less if they weren't freely available for download. The more people download them, the more they are read, and they get to be known. We are in touch with a huge number of readers, we discuss many things with them. Most of them purchased our books and gave them as presents after they had downloaded the texts. Buying a copy may be regarded as a recompense to the authors for their copyleft stance, or as the most convenient choice (fiction reads much better on bound paper sheets), or as an act of fetishism, ownership lust, whatever you want. The most important thing is: the virtuous circle works.
And yet, only a tiny few authors and publishers understand this. The vast majority of publishers still deem copyleft as a bizarre thing. It happened that some publishers, talking about our strategies, belittled them by calling copyleft 'just a marketing trick' or 'a stratagem', and calling us 'shrewd'. Well, of course this is also marketing. We make a living out of our books. This is far from being inconsistent behaviour.
Publishers are supposed to be entrepreneurs, and we are supposed to be heartbleeding activists, right? Wrong. We're offering them a viable, successful strategy on a silver plate, a strategy which not only sells books, but even creates and maintains a community of volunteer word-spreaders, and instead of following the example they mock-puristically sneer at us...because we're selling books, as though they were the activists, the unselfish anticapitalists.
As to being shrewd, why, is it better to be dumb? |
