Piperno’s biological and stepchildren

In the balmy Roman October, Alessandro Piperno is dressed, as always, as Sherlock Holmes, but he orders a Caesar salad and a Coca-Cola Zero, and no bread, as if we were in Los Angeles: In short, he is a cross between Professor Ludovico Spinazzola, a D’Annunzio-esque Roman art critic, and Ethan Kaffee, a rough-and-ready Hollywood film star—the protagonists of his latest novel, Gli scherzi della vita, published, as usual, by Mondadori.

There, after what can only be described as a stormy night, on Christmas Eve morning these two mirror-image men wake up, each in the other’s body, with their roles and continents reversed, somewhere between Kafka and Il marchese del Grillo featuring Gasperino the charcoal burner, and Trading Places. “And above all Freaky Friday, a film from the 2000s starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter swapping roles – the rebellious daughter with the middle-class mother. In my novel, there’s the added complication that the two don’t even know each other,” says Piperno, dressed in his customary tweed, cufflinks and a blue tie in a Windsor knot, in a bar-restaurant where one sometimes finds him even at dawn, writing in freezing temperatures so he can smoke freely.

But now he has even given up his pipe – once again, he is half Ethan Kaffee, the American star obsessed with healthy living who takes ice-cold baths in the morning before a helicopter ski trip; yet at the same time, he embodies the old Roman bon vivant, at ease among the statues and paintings of the Carracci. One has bread (perhaps gluten-free) but no teeth; the other has teeth but no bread. One has high triglycerides and a paunch, whilst the other, with his chiselled physique, leads an even worse sex life, trapped in a highly regimented existence devoted to ‘longevity’ – the theory that, if we look after our bodies properly, they will never let us grow old.

“But then, after a while, the book becomes far less supernatural than it seems, and my usual themes emerge,” says Piperno – namely, upper-middle-class and highly dysfunctional families, and then children and stepchildren, siblings and half-siblings; Professor Spinazzola, who seems a bit like Bernard Berenson and a bit like Vittorio Sgarbi (though he bears no resemblance to the real Vittorio Spinazzola, the literary critic “whom I knew—thin, sober, haughty”) has a Filipino half-brother who, in a strange arrangement, is also something of a servant to him, and a daughter recognised only by court order; the actor, on the other hand, has a son who committed suicide and pours all his affection onto a piglet named Freddy.

The two will later meet on a Roman terrace, but we will return to that later. In the meantime, Piperno’s ‘supernatural’ turning point. Excuse me, but couldn’t he have written a good novel about himself, like everyone else? Perhaps with a bit of trauma, a bit of pain. “I discovered I’m also dyslexic.” See? It was perfect (“No, I’ve had enough of myself and I’ve had enough of people who talk about themselves. So I’m throwing myself into fantasy. And this is nothing; you’ll see the next one”).

“It’s almost like fan fiction,” I tell him. “What?” Fan fiction – the novels popular with young people these days, based on real-life characters. For example, you could write one about… “Julia Roberts,” he says, his eyes lighting up. This one, however, is clearly about Tom Cruise, starting with the names: Ethan, like Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible, and Kaffee, like Daniel Kaffee from A Few Good Men. “Cruise is a fantastic actor, whom I’ve always loved, not just for his films but also for his life choices.” Piperno, surely you’re not planning to convert to Scientology? “That, no.”

However, his passion extends to the latest ‘Digger’, via ‘Top Gun’: ‘naturally the sequel, “Maverick”, which is far better’. Pipernian snobbery: loving not just a rubbish American film but even its spin-off; after all, he told Malcom Pagani that he loves ‘everything tacky’.

And so, first and foremost, not just cinema but trash TV: “‘Temptation Island’. But the original version is better; the Italian one is too sanitised and prudish”. “I watch a great deal of television, including ‘Matrimonio a prima vista’; one day my friend Saverio Costanzo told me that his father Maurizio used to have a study with numerous televisions on at the same time – that sounds like paradise to me. These days, there isn’t a single platform I’m not subscribed to. I pay a fortune.” Can’t you cancel whenever you want? “No. I don’t know how to cancel.”

Are you struggling with these smart TVs? We’re from the same generation; I remember the moment when my father could no longer find his way around the gadgets, and I realised he’d grown old – and now it’s me who can no longer manage these unfamiliar remote controls. He looks at me triumphantly through his round glasses, which make his dark pupils appear larger. “But I’m a master, a satrap of remote controls.” A massive TV? “Normal.” Even in the bedroom? “Yes.” His wife Simona, also a French scholar, puts up with it. The wife whom he claims to have corrupted with vulgar pleasures: TV and McDonald’s. In short, beneath this tweed, Piperno harbours a real roughneck. “Yes,” he says, looking thoroughly satisfied.

He appears more at ease, less troubled than in the past; yet it is clear that he takes great delight in playing with these two opposites: on the outside, the Anglo-Gaddian gentleman, with his awkward politeness and old-fashioned courtesy; on the inside, the so-called rough-and-ready character.

A figure who has stood the test of time—talk of longevity pales in comparison—ever since those sensational early successes of 2005. Those who were there will remember: the chart-topping triumphs, the covers of the weekly magazines. The success of "Con le peggiori intenzioni" feels like something from a distant, lost world. Neither the iPhone nor social media had yet been invented. A novel like his used to sell 200,000 copies; today, even reaching 20,000 is a feat. As for the weekly magazines, they are now objects of nostalgia, like the typewriter or the VHS.

In 2012, with my third novel, I won the Strega Prize, the highest honour in Italian literature: ‘I hadn’t eaten for two days because I was so anxious, and I drank too much liqueur on an empty stomach; they were so keen on taking photos that I ended up in hospital with gallbladder problems, going straight from Villa Giulia to the clinic. I don’t have fond memories of it. But I say this in general about all awards. I have not entered one since. I find it baffling that a work of art can be judged and awarded a prize in comparison to others. Even Philip Roth – who, for me, was the greatest writer of his time – surprised me with all his interest in the Nobel Prize, which he never actually won. On the contrary, I have great respect for Woody Allen, who has always kept his distance from competitions. When I’m introduced as a ‘Premio Strega’ writer, I think it’s absurd; I feel much more like a Lazio fan than a Premio Strega writer.”

That year, the ceremony “was still held with a certain anarchic freedom regarding food, which was later regulated”. In this latest novel, there is a sentence: “the rush for the Roman buffet is like the stagecoach raid in John Ford’s American films”. “Well, even at those old Strega Prize ceremonies, there were people who left home specifically to eat”. I have in mind certain very petite ladies who were only ever seen there, who would emerge under cover of darkness, and whom you would never encounter at any other time of the year.

The Strega was also a form of social safety net, humanitarian aid ‘part of a whole economy of freeloading that thrived in Rome – and still does – on buffets and charity. The poet Valentino Zeichen might ring you, a young, inexperienced writer, showering you with flattery, and tell you, “You must eat; it’s time to go for breakfast.” But it was he who needed to eat’. And then he’d make you foot the bill. “Yes.”

There is a scene in the novel where the writer, in the actor’s body, and the actor, in the writer’s body, finally meet on a typical terrace, complete with a buffet and the hostess who has just been ranting and raving about the boorish American actor, but immediately throws herself at his feet – the boorish American actor who turns up unannounced at her home to feed her, in a typically Roman twist.

Rome is the city where even longevity comes to an end. The novel also depicts the demise of journalism, with the daft phone calls from lifestyle journalists – one of whom wants to know the secret of bald men’s success in society – and a media star and Ethan’s romantic rival, a smooth-talking intellectual from The Atlantic, who arrives in Italy feted by everyone on the terraces.

It recalled Carrère’s visit to Rome this summer, with Romans’ obsessive, mythomaniacal tales à la Verdone – ‘he wouldn’t leave’, ‘he threw up on my carpet’, and so on. – and every one of them had had a fling with him, and then there were the parties, like the one at Marisela Federici’s – which, I admit, was my idea; I thought I’d do some free local marketing, like a tourist board, and I thought he couldn’t leave Rome without the ‘Marisela experience’. He turned to me, visibly startled, and said, “j’ai la panique du buffet”—buffet panic. Yet, if one suffers from such panic, Rome is arguably the least advisable city to visit.

“He’s not the first person to point out this coincidence to me. But I haven’t followed the case very closely; I prefer ‘Temptation Island’,” says Piperno. “I was, in fact, one of the first to set a degree thesis on Carrère, twenty years ago.” Because Piperno is also a professor at the University of Tor Vergata. How is this other twentieth-century institution, academia, faring?

“It’s changed completely since I was a student myself. The other day, a student came in for a meeting and said to me: ‘Professor, I can’t make it to the exam on 3 October. Could we do it on the 4th instead?’ Imagine saying something like that to a lecturer thirty years ago. I replied ironically: ‘Of course, but look, don’t worry about it – I’ll come to you, at home, on demand.’ But I do wonder: was our old university better – with its ‘barons’ and perhaps even harassment? I wouldn’t say so.” Harassment? “Yes, I know women who’ve had to change faculties because of the appalling advances from their superiors.”

Piperno has gone ‘woke’ – now that is news. Piperno, who wrote about professors who were wrongly accused and ‘cancelled’, just as in the novel Aria di famiglia. So is it true, as was suspected, that in Italy we have gone straight from harassment to ‘with this “woke” business, you can’t say anything anymore’? In America it lasted thirty years; in Italy, less than Flaiano’s Martian or Carrère’s Roman. “If it didn’t last long, I say thank goodness – we aren’t sectarian puritans like the Americans. They’ve got it right in their blood; just think of Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter, or McCarthyism…”

In addition to his roles as a fiction and non-fiction writer—a contributor to Corriere—and as a professor, there is a third aspect of Piperno’s work that is even more quintessentially twentieth-century: his role as editor of the Meridiani series, those massive volumes with blue covers striped with gold like diplomatic passports and a silk bookmark. Marvellous critical editions, with features that are a real treat for bibliophiles, but at one time they were above all status symbols; you might not have read them, but you simply had to have them in your home. Now I suspect nobody wants them any more.

“Don’t say that, it’s not true at all. If you watch a television programme, for example, there’s always a Meridiano in the background on the bookshelves.” Which is, in fact, the Treccani of those who’ve studied. “On the Gruber programme, the guests joining from home always have a Meridiano, alongside a few Adelphi and a few Einaudi Supercorallo.” Yes, but they’re all middle-aged. These days, not even the Maranza crowd in Turin has purchased any Meridiani, even while raiding Feltrinelli. Given their cost. They’re the Louis Vuittons of the publishing world. “Don’t be ridiculous. There are some for 85 euros, but also some for 20. We’re also producing some very attractive new editions.”

Even Kaffee—that is, the professor—in the character of Kaffeee, one of the first things he does in the novel is to stock up on Meridiani editions, to replenish the library of the villa, which currently consists of just thirteen volumes. Perhaps they should be produced in hardback editions, like Ikea books. “You’re a provocateur. We’re in the black, you know. We have been for two years.” The Piperno touch. The Mario Monti of the Meridiani series. “In France there’s the equivalent of the Pléiade; they give them as a gift if you’re invited to dinner, instead of a bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers. Recently, however, a well-known figure asked us, as a wedding gift for his son who was getting married, for 2,000 euros’ worth of Meridiani; we put together a special box set for him.”

He must have been one of the contestants on “Temptation Island”.

“And tell me, do you use artificial intelligence?” “Of course.” “Which one?” “Claude. But not for writing – because, unfortunately, it’s rubbish at that – but for all sorts of research. You’re using it to write this interview,” he insists, narrowing his little eyes as he pays the bill without anyone noticing. “But how will it work? Will it transcribe my words in a fluent, conversational style? They often do that, and I don’t really like it. I prefer to speak in a refined manner…”. Then he adds, “Do make sure you use the AI,” he insists, clearly amused by his own ruse, as he exits the scene—part Spinazzola, part Ethan Kaffee, king of the Meridiani and something of a rough character (though it seems unlikely that he has a television at home; we would have to verify, but never mind).