Il Centro CULTURE &
SOCIETY
page 37
Tuesday 14th August 2007
Dan Fante in his Torricella Peligna
The American writer was received
yesterday by Mayor Tiziano Teti
Dan Fante returns home. The American author, son of art, (the son of
John Fante) was received in the Town Hall yesterday by
the
Mayor, Tiziano Teti, in a small welcome ceremony.
Torricella is the small village in the Province of Chieti, from which
Nicola, the bricklayer, emigrated from Italy in 1901, a personage often
described in the novels of his son Fante senior.
Dan Fante has been in Abruzzo since 13th August, following a
stop in Tuscany, in Livorno, where he took part in a music festival with
the group Hollowblue. This band led by Gianluca Maria Sorace, had set a
text by Dan to music.
Every time he returns to Italy, this son of the author of “Ask the Dust”
and “Wait for Spring, Bandini”, a writer in his own right, (although so
far only two of his books have been published in Italy: “Angels in
Pieces” and “Mooch” by Marcos y Marcos), wants to visit his Abruzzo,
especially Pescara, where he has many friends, and Torricella Peligna,
which he considers to be a part of his heart.
Last Tuesday, Dan Fante attended a meeting organised by Valeria De Cecco
for the journal Abruzzo Italia, at the MediaMuseum in Pescara,
(the Museum of the Cinema, in Piazza Alessandrini, whose president is
Edoardo Tiboni), at which he presented the typewriter his father had
used to write his last novel before becoming blind and unable to write
for himself, “The Brotherhood of the Grape”.
After spending a few days in Pescara, he came to Torricella yesterday,
where he will stay until later today, before returning to America, where
he lives.
Dan Fante has written several books and collections of poetry, but most
of his works are so far not published in Italy.
Francesco Durante, translator of many of Dan’s father John’s works,
however, is translating into Italian the play “Don Giovanni” which will
be produced on the stage during 2008 in Naples for the occasion of the
opening of the Museum of Emigration, which is being set up in the
Neapolitan capital.
“I shall be very happy,” Dan Fante said yesterday during the ceremony at
the Town Hall in Torricella Peligna, “if next year, after its
inauguration in Naples, my play “Don Giovanni” could be put on here too.
Obviously it is a piece about my father so I really hope to have it play
for my Torricellan family too.”
Dan Fante in Torricella, with Piero Ottobrini and
Tiziano Teti |