Tutti i contenuti di Jacopo Iannacci
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Tipo: BlogMar, 02/10/2012 - 09:49
I never paid too much attention to the world of luxury cruises, that unquestionably represents one of the more evident expressions of (real or presumed) richness. I did not do it because I never embarked for a luxury cruise. I never had this chance, until when I recently read a brilliant essay written by David Foster Wallace and entitled A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (published by Little, Brown and Company in 1997).Wallace had a one week luxury cruise in the Caribbean – aboard the cruise ship MV Zenith – paid by a magazine for which he was supposed to write an extensive overview for advertisement purposes. As a matter of fact, after the journey he wrote the review as he was commissioned to do. Nonetheless, the experience in the Caribbean was so staggering that David Foster wrote also the work mentioned above.
The style of the essay is a well chosen mix of attention to the details, of deep ability to observe the behaviour of people through and beyond appearances, and, also importantly, of sharp and well balanced irony. Such a blend of ingredients enables a terrific echo for the reader, who has the possibility of observing situations and...
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Tipo: BlogLun, 03/09/2012 - 09:24
The ability of Carlos Ruiz Zafón as a novelist is beyond argument. The work published by the Spanish author in 2001 and entitled La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind, in the English translation) has been selling millions of copies worldwide, received enthusiastic critical recognitions, and won several international awards.His next novel, published in 2008 by Planeta Corporación in Spain and by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in UK, and entitled El juego del ángel (The Angel's Game), is a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind, and I recently had the chance to read it.
The set of The Angel's Game is a rather dark looking Barcelona, in a period of time between 1920s and 1930s. The main character, who is also the storyteller, is David Martin, a guy in his mid twenties, working as a journalist for a newspaper called Voz de la Industria (literally, Voice of Industry). Martin took this job mainly for earning a living, since the real ambition of the young character is to become a successful novelist.
David is given the chance to write and publish a short novel by the deputy director of the Voz...
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Tipo: BlogLun, 13/08/2012 - 08:23
It seems that, in the chaotic dynamics of our lives, everything must be just astonishing or disappointing. No other option is admitted. All this sketches the contour of a paradox – very modern, but, unavoidably, a paradox.If most part of what is related to our common living, like habits, personal relationships, expectations, is increasingly sophisticated and breathtaking for its hectic timing, on the other hand, our involvement –through judgement and appreciation – is more and more rudimentary. So that the will is becoming redundant, if not even burdensome.
I think that these speculations represent the key point to have a deep understanding of the case of Christopher Johnson McCandless, without loosing sight of what really counts in it. The story of McCandless, and most of all its tragic ending, reported in a book authored by Jon Krakauer (published by Villard in 1996), inspired a major movie directed by Sean Penn in 2007, carrying the same name of Krakauer's manuscript: Into the Wild.
However, it is not my intention to discuss either the book or the movie, but, based on the precise reconstruction – provided by...
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Tipo: BlogGio, 05/07/2012 - 08:45
Recent history of Italy has been characterized by terror and violence. The official records, and more dramatically the living memory of people, bear the scars of such a trail of crimes, blood and death, that started with the birth of our Republic after the end of Second World War, and crawled until now. Despite such criminal actions seem to be inseparable from the concept of Italian Republic, the most severe concentration of their occurrence is framed between 1969 and 1993. I myself have direct memories of some of them, like the massacre of the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992, as well as the bombing on the rapido 904 – a passenger train blown up into a tunnel in 1984 –, causing the death of 17 innocent people.In spite of the variety of actions, their leading forces can be ascribed to a couple of different entities, namely, criminal organizations – like Mafia – on one side, and terrorist cells driven by extreme political ideologies, like Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades), inspired by left party ideologies, and Ordine Nuovo (the New Order), with ideas coming from extreme right party. In all of these circumstances the Italian Republic was somehow...
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Tipo: BlogLun, 21/05/2012 - 14:38
Is it somehow true that an answer exists for nearly any question? If the answer is yes, so what if more questions allow the same answer? I am rather sure that many people – including me – would address questions like «Are you looking for something?», «What is that you missed a long time ago?», «What did you never reach up to now?», with one specific word: happiness. Nonetheless, I am also pretty sure that many people – including me – would feel uncomfortable and ashamed of answering those questions with the word happiness.«Why people would ever be discomforted by happiness?». Well, I have multiple answers to this question, and hereafter the circle closes. In summary, the answer to many questions generated a supplementary query that allows, in turn, multiple replies. Joking apart, I think that the distress in answering to the questions above can be mainly related to the fear of being either happy or unhappy. It appears that we are dealing with a question admitting two contradictory answers.
I think that the level of confusion I generated in the reader about the theme of this article – happiness – can be marked without reserve as chaos....
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Tipo: BlogLun, 16/04/2012 - 09:54
«Who is the pee of these slovos I slooshy?»
«What is a language, and how it can be defined?»
A question that looks either too complicated or naïve to be answered. Nevertheless, it is somehow true that if we rarely wonder about this is just because we rarely are able to address such a question properly.A language is a code, a group of symbols, characters, and rules combining them. A sort of standard shared by a multitude of people, aimed at the exchange of information between them. This is the most straightforward definition of language I can envisage, but it is also the most impersonal. I am sure I can do better than this.
A language is something more. It is the means through which people express everything they feel to the others. Emotions and states of mind like fear, anger, happiness, joy, need words and sentences in order to be communicated. A language is also the synthesis of cultures, a sort of constitution in which the history, the geography, the beliefs and common attitudes of a certain population are engraved.
The latter consideration opens the floor for discussion to all the...
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