Ferrante February - Scarabocchio Newsletter - Feb 2022
"The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to neither power nor time. " - Mary Oliver
Welcome to our monthly newsletter where I'll be sharing some ideas on writing & reading and some other lovely things to help fill your creative well.
Scarabocchio is a beautiful Italian word meaning scribbles, blots and doodles. It is believed to be derived from the same root as the scarab beetle, a powerful, elemental totem for your work.
I have been lucky enough to receive an advance copy of Elena Ferrante’s IN THE MARGINS: On The Pleasures Of Reading and Writing, and what a thing it is. What I find so inspiring is that Ferrante is so rigorous and clear-eyed about her own relationship to writing as a writer and as a woman writing. Her frustration at the constraints of the novel and of herself as a participant in that battle snarl and snap on every page.
What is “authentic” writing and thus “inauthentic” are a recurring concern?
She battles with what is considered “fine writing” the kind that we read and say that a book is well written or beautiful but which for her, seems a kind of betrayal of the ragged range of emotion and experience.
It is too simplistic to reduce this wonderful group of essays and speeches to say it is about the gap between the writing and the writer but there is a sense of that chasm at every turn. Because she is that kind of fearless thinker she goes straight into the yawping gap and I found myself willingly following her. It forced me to ask myself these bigger questions and the way in which the novel is ultimately an inadequate vessel for the experience.
Her chapter, Dante’s Rib is a joy. Her passion for his work sings on the page and her appreciation of his rendering of Beatrice. I have re-read it already and cannot recommend this book enough. It is accessible and exciting and if you have not read its predecessor FRANTUMAGLIA you could always order both.
My copy of FRANTUMAGLIA is tabbed and annotated and remains a much-loved resource to refill the creative well when things are a little tearful and desolate in the writing room.
Margins is published by Europa Editions UK on March 17 pre-order here https://uk.bookshop.org/cart
The Lost Daughter (Netflix, 2021)
Interestingly, Ferrante admits that for a while she considered THE LOST DAUGHTER her final book, the last she would publish. She was, she says, done with reportage and naturalistic storytelling.
Thankfully she stumbled on to produce the books we all love so much. Also, this month to add to my immersive Ferrante February, I watched the magnificent new film version of The Lost Daughter. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut is as awkward and unsettling as the novel.
Evidently, Ferrante is very approving of the film and granted the rights to Gyllenhaal on the basis that she alone directed it.
I first read the novel when it came out in 2006 and the film is near faithful to the text with a few notable exceptions but is entirely its own thing too. Gyllenhaal has managed to recreate and sustain the sticky and troubling inner weather of the novel and for that alone it is worth seeing.
The ending of both book and film (though slightly different) is a masterclass in closing the action down and giving the reader/viewer a highly satisfying payoff but without tying it all together in a patronising blunt-ended manner.
The film has been nominated for Golden Globes, Baftas and of course Oscars as well as a slew of other honours. In the UK you can watch it on Netflix.
Something of a gear change now and some would say from the sublime to the ridiculous. This month I have been running sessions on Sunday evenings to help writers get going and then sustain a writing practice.
Highly practical bullet point type of strategies and I am extremely pleased that writers are contacting me to say how well they are getting on with the few small changes I have recommended. The one they liked the most is what I call The Jerry Seinfeld Writing Technique. The basis of this is that you sit down to write at your scheduled time. You don’t have to write, but for the duration of that time, you aren’t allowed to do anything else. This has for me, been a significant and results-producing shift.
The comedian has a few other writing tricks up his sleeve too. You can listen to them in this interview. If you find it goes on a bit (endorsements and so forth) just scroll ahead. I love him for his frankness, discipline, clear-eyed vision about simply doing the work, creativity and, of course, his excellent tip as described above. I have found it a hugely useful tool and you might too.
