Writer, essayist, and literary critic, Alessandro Piperno is one of the most authoritative voices in contemporary Italian fiction. A winner of the Strega Prize and editorial director of the Meridiani Mondadori series, Piperno has made literature a form of intimate and analytical exploration, balancing stylistic rigor with a passion for detail. In the writing courses at the Accademia Molly Bloom – hosted in our Milan boutique – Piperno shares his experience as a novelist, bringing into the classroom the complexity of narrative creation and a deep love for the literary classics. In this conversation, he talks about Tolstoy, the beauty of the “book as object,” and the fetishism of paper, blending personal memories with reflections on the profound meaning of reading.
What is your contribution to this fiction writing course?
My goal is to illustrate to those listening the difficulties a writer faces every time they attempt to construct a novel full of characters.
To do this, I’ll use what many—including myself—consider perhaps the most beautiful novel ever written: Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. In that book, there are three pairs of characters, and Tolstoy orchestrates an absolutely fascinating kind of dance through which he presents each of them without ever losing energy. It’s almost miraculous. He does this through a game of glances, a play of eyes: each character is introduced by one we already know. This gives an incredible sense of naturalness. That, I think, will be my lesson today.
And why are you so in love with this novel?
Because I believe it’s one of the highest peaks of world literature. It has all the right ingredients of a tragic novel. It’s full of moments of genius—but the first is that Anna Karenina is a tragic novel that begins almost like a comedy.
Then, gradually, once all the characters are in place, we begin to see two love stories emerge in the background, which are completely antithetical. One is the passionate affair between Anna and Vronsky. The other is the more virtuous, and for Tolstoy more authentically romantic, relationship between Levin and Kitty. In this sense, it’s a “Mozartian” novel: not a single dull moment, and everything sparkles with richness and freshness.
And then there’s a narrative technique that would become hugely important in the 20th century: Tolstoy invents it without even realizing it. It’s the stream of consciousness, which appears just before Anna’s suicide. She begins to think, and Tolstoy lays bare her thoughts—fragmented, disordered, full of associations. Without naming it, Tolstoy invents a technique that would go on to define modernist literature in the century to follow.
As editorial director of Meridiani Mondadori, how important is the physical “book object,” the paper, the materiality of reading?
When I accepted this role, I made a promise to myself: never forget that books are objects of pleasure, and should be treated as such. A book should be beautiful, comfortable. I’m talking about the object itself. And what’s inside should be, at the very least, elegant.
The idea that a masterpiece of humanity could be commented on in an overly technical way bothers me quite a bit. I believe that when you publish a classic, you should support it with paratext that is—if not equally—at least very elegant.
Is there a particular kind of paper you’re especially fond of?
The Meridiani books are printed on a famous type of paper: “Bible paper,” incredibly thin and very refined, which gives a vaguely sacred feel. As if it were a gospel, or one of those Bibles you find in American motel rooms.
I must admit, for a long time I was tempted to read digitally—which I still do for work. But I have the feeling, and I can’t quite explain why, that reading a novel—or even a collection of poetry—on anything other than paper is a diminished experience.
It’s interesting how the book remains an ancient yet non-obsolete instrument. They’ve tried every possible way to kill it, but it’s still here. And I can say, from my editorial experience, that today’s younger generations show a strong interest in the book as an object. There’s an authentic fetishism there—something my own generation never really had.