Whenever Marco ends up in an
article it means he’s in trouble. Or that I am. But we love each other deeply,
and I say this to preface the story and save readers the worry
that I’ll be fired for bad-mouthing the publisher. Marco is not going to fire
me. He is the closest thing I have to a brother, and in Italy,
you never sack your own family. Besides, he has accepted my greatest professional
limitation: I can write of virtually nothing but personal experience.
Inevitably, my page is colored with the shades of the day, and these days our
pressroom has been busy birthing a book whose creation filled us all with the
elated buzz of nervous midwifery.
For those who know little of the
publishing business, it’s safe to say that at least eight months of the
birthing process goes on in the author’s own belly. But the real painful
contractions start once she turns in the manuscript to be fitted for its final
physical proportions. Those of us who aid with the little libro’s actual
delivery start losing sleep over font size and having nightmares that the book
will not reflect the colors we chose. Like politicians with opposite platforms
who all claim dibs on The Common Good, editors and designers start tugs-of-war
the likes of which are best held behind confidential doors.
Great arguments start small, of course, and the one
Marco and I waged last week began as big as a punctuation point and grew to include
every single personal and professional misdemeanor committed since the end of
the cold war-and we didn’t even know each other then. And though we are both
quite equal in the depth of our faults and the range of our vocabularies, he is
much better at digging them up under pressure. And I don’t blame him. Everyone
knows that Italians are much better arguers than the average New World Joe, and
there’s nothing wrong with proving it.
‘You’ve already edited,’ Marco said. ‘I am not going
to insert all these extra commas you dreamt up last night.’
‘Yes, you are,’ I said, unmoved by his war-cry. ‘And
quickly please. We have tons of other things to do before deadline.’
Italians do not use the word
‘deadline,’ of course. In this country, nothing is urgent enough to merit
death. They simply say scadenza, which is actually ‘expiration,’ and
adopt the very same attitude English speakers use when they decide to eat a box
of stale biscuits. ‘Best used before’ is just a recommendation, after all, and scadenza has much the same feeling. It would be best if we finished our jobs
before the manuscript is due to the printing press, but if not, the printer
could very well wait. There were tons of things to squabble over before closing
time.
Some time after teardrops but safely before the
I’m-never-speaking-to-you-again scenario, Marco let me win on all accounts,
enlarging the font, narrowing the numerals, clarifying the captions and
inserting the commas. ‘Why do you make me fight so much,’ I asked, ‘when we
both know that you’ll end up doing everything that needs to be done?’
‘Protesting is part of sharing the process,’ he said
rather seriously. ‘Books are like babies, and there is always pain involved in
a birth.’
‘Oh Marco, how very male of you to notice.’
He smiled, sheepish. ‘But really, these things would
have no worth if I didn’t make you fight for them.’
‘So, arguing
makes your stocks rise?’
‘In a certain way, yes. If something’s easy, it’s
underappreciated.’
‘Really? In the U.S.
people try to make things look easy. It proves you’re good at what you
do.’
‘Here it’s the opposite,’ he mused. ‘But I’ve never
thought of it ‘til now.’
Neither had I. For me, these
considerations engendered a blow-me-out-of-the-water breakthrough that
explained the Italian fondness for obstacles and the reason they court
complexity with a zealousness that dizzies the linear mind. In this country,
things are worthy only if they are won. Instant gratification is not
gratification at all, for it’s the hard win that truly merits the victorious
struggle. ‘I’m going to write about this,’ I told him.
‘Fine,’ he agreed. ‘But keep me out of it. Your
articles always take way too much toll on my personal image.’
‘Oh please. You are so much better in print-a
beautiful fact made flesh, if you will.’
He laughed. ‘Maybe you should become a food and wine
writer. It’s so much safer.’
‘People who write about wines say they taste like bark
and violets or forest fungus and sandalwood. I can never taste any of that. And
how bark can be good to drink is beyond me.’
‘It’s an acquired taste,’ he
said. ‘Like most beautiful things. Lots of those taste like bark at the
beginning.’
There it was again. For
something to be truly worthy you have to suffer for it. And to think, until
today, I’ve always assumed that at first, beautiful things were certain to
taste like violets.
