There is a young man with great hopes wandering around the capital with an uncommon hunger for life and success. He won a scholarship that allows him to attend the Silvio d’Amico National Academy of Dramatic Art, in the directing sector. He arrives from the deep south, after a long train journey and the frantic welcome of relatives who already live in Rome and the surrounding area.
His eyes shine with curiosity and hope for the new life that appears before him. Even if his attention will be constantly directed beyond the Strait, to his land, to his elderly family: in this sense it can be said that his provincial “crust” (without the negative connotation with which the word has become ) will never fall off him.
The boy who dreams of being a director is called Andrea Camilleri and comes from Porto Empedocle, province of Girgenti, where he has already made his latinucci and, like messages in a bottle, has already sent his first poems to the most renowned magazines on the Peninsula. These are heroic years, post-war years. The one who would become Inspector Montalbano’s famous inventor leaves with a suitcase full of dreams and some clothes. There is little money that a caring and apprehensive family won’t let him miss, even though he isn’t floating in gold.
These and many other details are contained in a book that the Sellerio publishing house is sending to bookshops tomorrow and which is entitled I will write to you again, a very rich “domestic” collection of letters that goes from 1949 to 1960. Camilleri wrote to his father Giuseppe, but above all to his mother , Carmelina Fragapane, a circumstance that creates some misunderstandings with the parent who feels neglected.
In fact, in a note dated 26 May 1950 Andrea is forced to rebuke him affectionately: «Dear dad, your letter made me sorry for the indirect reproaches it contains. It is rare that I began a letter by addressing my mother only and exclusively. When I wrote to you, you were both present in my thoughts. And it’s unfair, let me tell you, the note you wanted to make on me.”
In short, there are the anxieties, the turmoil, the reports, the failures, the successes, the defeats, the melancholy and the apprehensions of a child who, of course, has nerves on edge, partly due to the distance, partly because he fears for the health of his people, partly because, like a young animal in the woods, he tries to survive in a naturally difficult context when he is alone.
The letters that follow one another are the family diary that becomes a “newspaper”, that is, direct and continuous information on everything that happens to him, even the banal purchase of a pair of trousers, an anger, a bitterness, a change of of home, an unexpected encounter. Or the news of an uncomfortable journey: «On the train to Messina they were in the company of three children who revealed small delinquent instincts…».
This collection of letters (edited by Salvatore Silvano Nigro, with the collaboration of Camilleri’s daughters: Andreina, Elisabetta and Mariolina) offers an authentic, genuine, sometimes moving insight into his life; reveals a more intimate and personal side of a narrator not yet fully formed, but already full of talent. The economic difficulties, the professional crossroads, the theatrical environment, the special relationship with Orazio Costa and the more complex one with Silvio d’Amico pass over the days.
Camilleri accompanies us on his training journey, from his first steps in the world of theater to his first literary experiences and tells us, in simple and direct language, about his passions, his friendships, his disappointments. And then, like gems scattered here and there, extraordinary meetings and friendships: Gassmann, Rossellini, Sartre, Genet.