“You’re Doing the Work for Them”: Claudia Durastanti on Class and Literature

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00:00:31: work.

00:00:33: Okay, here is From great expectations to any and nor do hillbilly elegy.

00:01:03: This is one of the most classic genres in modern literature.

00:01:07: Our guest today has written, what are the most acclaimed versions?

00:01:10: Of this story Claudia Dorastanti's novel La Straniera was a finalist for The Premio Strega In Italy.

00:01:19: the English translation Strangers I know received a pen award.

00:01:24: Chloe I was born in Brooklyn To an Italian immigrants family in the eighties.

00:01:29: Then her mother moved back with her and she grew up in rural Southern Italy.

00:01:33: She now lives in Rome, where she writes and translates including the latest Italian edition of The Great Gatsby.

00:01:41: Clare d'Arastanti made a name telling story about someone who escapes his class but in recent essay for Berlin Reviews he talks about why there is problem this particular genre – the one that French called transfuge de classe.

00:01:57: As these working-class novels have gotten more popular in recent years, the reality of being able to achieve upward mobility has only narrowed.

00:02:06: Today Claudia talks with my cohost Lauren Euler about what genre gets wrong and what stories might be told instead.

00:02:15: Here's the conversation.

00:02:17: Hi Claudia!

00:02:18: Hi Lauren I'm

00:02:19: very excited.

00:02:20: just talk you about your piece.

00:02:22: Where did idea for it come from?

00:02:25: Yeah, I'm working on a new collection of essays and i wrote extensively about my class upbringing in Strangers.

00:02:35: But I was writing from very different position but still believed that social mobility worked the same way it did for me!

00:02:44: I could attend public school or receive many scholarships...I made them in ways typical class migrants make.

00:02:54: But then all of a sudden, when I was addressing class again.

00:02:57: I found the different tone which was a little bit more spiteful perhaps and maybe I'm projecting but I realized that even my life couldn't be possible under new social political and economical conditions.

00:03:11: And then like why especially after a near-nosed novel?

00:03:15: A lot people felt free and bold in writing about their own class upbringing, but they're still referencing a man's place which was written in the eighties.

00:03:25: And so it felt.

00:03:27: if everything is different how can you write a class migrant narrative with the same tropes or features?

00:03:38: It's something that I did seven years later from this book to come back and thinking, would I write this differently now?

00:03:47: And i think i would especially because my social mobility path stabilized a little bit.

00:03:54: So in a way that it's time to make space for other genre within working class literature which feels a little hijacked from class migrants

00:04:06: tales.

00:04:06: Okay so you're saying that the working-class literature has been kind of dominated by what auto-fictional or the French term that is often used as transfuge de classe narrative, which from an Anglophone world it's kind of like a rags to riches story but little bit more sociological and realistic.

00:04:26: And you talk about how this genre has exploded in France over the last ten years.

00:04:33: Can you describe what we know?

00:04:38: In

00:04:40: France, I think the phenomenon was... The class discourse is extensively present in literature and sociology.

00:04:50: I mean, our near know and didieres-de-bonne are sociologists themselves anyway.

00:04:55: so it's something more familiar.

00:05:01: It becomes simply popular.

00:05:03: And you know, the Nobel Prize to a year now.

00:05:06: in their speech she said I'm writing for millions of people like me.

00:05:11: and also saying millions is interesting because She's speaking about generation where social mobility was really relevant for masses You know?

00:05:20: Millions of people that no longer the case.

00:05:23: so something become more seen Nominated represented in a time frame or political frame where the very experience of social mobility is not possible as such.

00:05:39: A lot could be explained in terms of nostalgia also, which was big if we have to talk about feelings that it's something really big.

00:05:48: and I think boom because nostalgia is safe talking create the same kind of reactive negative feelings that it would if it was applied so much on the past.

00:06:06: So I think The Boom Of Transfusion Class is related to the fact you can talk about them because they are no longer

00:06:13: there.".

00:06:15: You talk about your background, your parents and you have a kind of like a bit of an alienation from your past.

00:06:30: But also you're also alienated from your new class but little bit right?

00:06:32: Like this is the general trajectory of these kinds of

00:06:34: books.".

00:06:35: And I think what was interesting that you just said was that you would write it differently today.

00:06:44: um...and i wanted to push on that because there's two competing narratives here which are saying my trajectory upward trajectory would not be possible today.

00:06:56: And also, I would describe my upward trajectory in a different tone if i were writing about it today as opposed to when you're writing about It In The Twenty-Tens right?

00:07:06: Yeah exactly.

00:07:08: and that account of upward mobility was in a way a classic account As You Said.

00:07:16: so it was heavily influenced by moral feelings, shame and guilt in the imposter syndrome.

00:07:22: Whereas if I had to write about it today or was living that condition today?

00:07:26: I would realize that It wouldn't be such a linear process.

00:07:30: There's also the possibility of coming back.

00:07:32: so landing in middle class is not... So its one way ride as they used to be on a lot of you know, transfusion class typical books.

00:07:42: And when i think writing that as a political subject so much.

00:07:50: And the paradox is that right now, I no longer belong to that class...I'm starting think are these accounts necessarily political or they're more interested in analyzing shame and guilt compared?

00:08:06: What's the political trajectory?

00:08:08: Do you want to make other readers identify with your story, recognize themselves or are you trying?

00:08:28: applied to me is no longer working.

00:08:29: Of course, I'm not taking it into consideration in new migrant movements and into Europe.

00:08:33: so iIm not talking about that but It's more About.

00:08:37: would another maybe possible?

00:08:39: And when you realize That's no longer the case.

00:08:41: I think The tone changes deeply of Course.

00:08:43: yeah, can we talk a little bit about what you mean by political like this?

00:08:48: You know the tension I think there's kind of like A fast outtention between Like What's quote unquote literary and what's quote-unquote Political right you write in this essay, it seems that an order to be considered truly literary trans class writing is expected not to be too overtly political.

00:09:04: And I'm wondering what exactly you mean specifically by like... What does the difference between political working-class literature and literature represents?

00:09:18: So i think my open critique was with double-bind between the class discourse and the fact that is usually formatted into auto fictional or it's relating to The factory.

00:09:33: That was you know, working in the fields of the grandparents.

00:09:39: In the piece I argued at middle-class writers and working-class Writers who specialized and transfused a class narratives are both deeply interested in this idea of guilt about the money or shame, about betraying your own circumstances.

00:09:57: The very idea that being authentic was really important up to my generation and millennials.

00:10:05: so when even these ideas are selling out... fades, what happens to be in a political subject and your own class account.

00:10:14: So I think not when we say political novel...I was at the working-class literature festival.

00:10:21: there's this festival in Italy.

00:10:23: it's been..this year was the fourth edition.

00:10:25: so the first year we had a panel and we were talking extensively about Erno, Eduard Louis, Didier Ribon of course!

00:10:32: And then a guy came up.

00:10:36: Okay, you talked a lot about memoirs and out-of-fictions but where is the working class novel?

00:10:40: And I didn't have particularly creative answer.

00:10:43: But i was thinking about Elena Fernandez especially at third volume which is extensively focused on life in the factory... ...in the seventies and the discovery of feminist roots.. ..and that's a little bit more stereotypical.... advanced pedagogical and political result.

00:11:03: in a way, because it appeals both to readers who are working class or not working-class.

00:11:10: It creates a wider network of thinking about what social change is.

00:11:15: I think that reaches out as it doesn't focus so much on the personal perspective.

00:11:21: So this allows for more space which identification or projecting yourself into a character, but radically imagining your self even if you come from very different account of life and the life of another.

00:11:34: Basically what you consider imagining yourself in very different circumstances?

00:11:38: And I think that when there's not space what are the social, economical connections?

00:11:46: What can be

00:11:47: done?".

00:11:47: And I love memoirs that don't do that but i wish for them to not be presented as political fiction about class and not necessarily you living under certain circumstances.

00:12:02: Me being an undergrad and me starting to think about being an undergraduate in caring for other people like me.

00:12:07: it was a very extensive long project.

00:12:11: It could also have not happened.

00:12:13: I don't know how you feel about that, but being an interpreter of your circumstances is not necessarily something that happens just because you lived them and so sometimes i feel That right now the stakes are very low.

00:12:26: The expectations which refuse to class memoirs And uh Which have boomed especially after a near-knows novel Are really the simple story of where you come from and were going, but not like portraying a wider picture.

00:12:43: So to me that room in space is what makes a novel political.

00:12:49: You say something about... I think you're talking about the nature of like, the political memoir.

00:12:53: The political normal and you say working class or lower-class literature is almost taken as political per se.

00:13:02: it just always is right?

00:13:03: And i wonder if you could expand on that why also even...I'm sure you have this experience too.

00:13:10: If Im in a intelligentsia type milieu Or an upper-class milieu then someone says all where are from and I said West Virginia.

00:13:16: Everyone's like ah!

00:13:19: A real person has arrived You know and they want to like hear all about it, right?

00:13:23: And I also have Like you Know i think is different than for me which Is like people are always say oh.

00:13:28: You should write About this you Should write about This and i'm like i don't i Don't Want To um but i Think It's Coming from the same place that you identify Which is That The literary world broadly, which is like the market critics journalists whatever tend to come from upper class backgrounds and they see lower-class people as inherently authentic or inherently political.

00:13:51: Right?

00:13:51: And I wonder if you could expand on why do think that it's

00:13:55: Yes?

00:13:56: because your doing work for them?

00:13:58: No way.

00:13:59: So i think my answer really gravitates around idea of labor.

00:14:04: when we write fiction We often think that auto-fiction has a higher cost in terms of production because we are, you know go and dig it into our past.

00:14:16: We're trying to elaborate very complex personal experiences but crafting the novel is damn hard!

00:14:24: You know?

00:14:25: And so... In a way what I feel that autofictional costly in terms, not in term of work but in terms of extracting materials let's say.

00:14:37: So what we think is a very complex genre because it requires a lot of you know psychological and analytical work.

00:14:44: I often find especially when i'm late with the deadline less time compared to crafting a proper, let's say scene or fictional scene.

00:14:58: Or an essay.

00:14:59: so I don't blame at all like working class writers who have bought into this out of fictional mode maybe for you know taste or interest but also with the idea that is it has a different value, and you can make more money out of that.

00:15:15: So I'm not trying to guilt shame authors who do that because for working-class writer right now writing in the autofictional mode compared to novel unless they're not writing a romanticy or crime novel... It's not rewarding so much!

00:15:31: And what rewards a knowledgement from this establishment?

00:15:36: Money comes.

00:15:40: I just wanted to say that because i think a lot of working class authors are aware, when they enter the scene and there is an authentic card.

00:15:49: They can also playfully play with it in one way or another.

00:15:53: And maybe consciously diminish the political tone as they know that up a certain point isn't interesting.

00:16:01: so... I've seen how working-class literature is received when it focuses on on work, on labor in the present and it's less attractive.

00:16:12: I must say that it feels less sexy for uh...the kind of people you were talking to because they are still fetishizing this idea off-you know?

00:16:21: The origins where you come from!

00:16:23: Because in a way taking care of those subjects does the work for you And i think that They can easily think that allowing for this work to be out there is due and something.

00:16:38: And which, as me quite a paradox right now.

00:16:41: I don't know how you feel about it but when i arrived strangers...I still thought that being seen or represented in fiction had a certain value in the outside world.

00:16:54: But now that the literacy, you know, the stats on literature or literary fiction particularly if we don't go into genre fiction are so low I'm wondering would working class girl like me still believe this idea of representation being seen?

00:17:14: Will she look at the novel openly discuss in literary society as the place where she wants to be, and I'm not sure about that.

00:17:25: Maybe we're also projecting... That kind of cultural establishment is same with the seventies eighties and nineties And i think that has radically changed over even the past five ten years.

00:17:38: So why are still handling this representation?

00:17:42: As deeply important?

00:17:43: We write these books.

00:17:45: who reads them?

00:17:48: So, if you're not writing for a working class audience.

00:17:52: You already know that your kind of reader is the person who's trying to place you in very specific spots.

00:18:00: and how can write without being angry or aware as you do?

00:18:07: Not wanting to play that role right about it at all!

00:18:12: Yeah I think too like... Is there an idea?

00:18:17: representation, it became popular for millennials during this sort of identity politics crisis in the twenty-tenths.

00:18:25: Right?

00:18:26: And... The idea of representation of marginalized identities and whatever kinds racialized identities were different like sexual orientations.

00:18:36: This was like THE MAIN push in the twenty-tenths.

00:18:40: What do you think is a relationship between class and identity as it's constructed, right?

00:18:43: Like like is class...is being a working-class writer an identity that you can just choose or not...?

00:18:51: Or are there something about material conditions of class which may change as class migrants

00:19:00: show?".

00:19:00: I find it like, it would be silly and kind of absurd for me to identify as a working class writer at this point because i am no longer work in class.

00:19:07: Right?

00:19:07: I had this experience when I was young but you know...I got out of it.

00:19:12: Yeah!

00:19:12: It's interesting For Me.

00:19:13: In Italy Of course You Had A Strong Up Until The End Of The Seventies.

00:19:23: You Had You Know Very Stable And Fixed Idea Who the Working Class Author and Writer Was.

00:19:29: Usually white man working in a factory didn't become class migrant at all, but it was like status and condition where you can still get dignified pay.

00:19:41: You would also have very deep rich cultural

00:19:44: life.".

00:19:45: And so right now even the work-in-class writer's system I'd say there is a hierarchy.

00:19:51: So if you're like myself, we were underclass.

00:19:54: You come from parents who never worked?

00:19:56: Do you come from the south?

00:19:57: there's even a dip disconnection between you to factories where in the north and this out We had no factories And we have no minds nothing that was shut enough.

00:20:05: people were underemployed.

00:20:07: so Even dad doesn't buy your a slot, let's say into a sort of working-class royalty.

00:20:13: Right now that I no longer belong to the class perhaps i have more straightforward vision in away and nobody can elude conditions.

00:20:23: they were born but they had to be honest when these are no longer playing a factor.

00:20:39: authors who are capable to reconnect to their roots or origins in a very steady way for long, long life.

00:20:49: You know there are writers that can still write working class novels although they have not been working-classed for let's say twenty thirty years.

00:20:56: so... To me this is fascinating process but if you like of more hybrid ways being into literature.

00:21:04: it would feel weird especially because deeply fictional, in a way.

00:21:10: And also I'm asking why there is no interest talking about the experience of being class migrant and then all of sudden circumstances have changed?

00:21:22: You go back to that but after you were no longer working-class or was it their own way working class for a long, long time.

00:21:33: I think it's what the French call de classement and so to me this idea of declassamento is not finding a proper representation in whether its auto-fiction or novels.

00:21:46: And I'm asking also you why do you think that happens?

00:21:49: Why isn't there an interest... This is not interesting.

00:21:51: You know the fact that we're going back.

00:21:53: Well..I think because you sort touch on these before your essay touches quite a lot which is that the affective experience of trans class narrative, upwardly mobile trans-class narrative.

00:22:04: Is still one shame and guilt at least as it's represented in these memoirs an auto fictional narratives right?

00:22:16: And

00:22:18: That to me...is not really my experience my experience.

00:22:24: And I think too, like the thing that was thinking while reading your essay

00:22:29: is

00:22:30: older writers or writers of a previous generation don't represent the possibility going back because actually maybe they want to go back and mine their families in communities for more stories.

00:22:42: but And I think that this is a political claim.

00:22:48: It's better to have more money like it's better you don't want to go back right.

00:22:52: and Also, I think like if you are a writer or your someone who values the life of the mind.

00:22:59: There is an inherent value in living a life That Is Urban.

00:23:05: You have some disposable income so that you can go to the theater, So that you could buy books.

00:23:10: I would consider education and access culture like privileges in themselves.

00:23:16: And if your primary experience of upward mobility as a working class or lower-class person is at least The affectation You know, you've betrayed your poor parents and your poor community.

00:23:32: And now you're like murdering them by writing about them.

00:23:35: if that's like your belief which I think is kind of a stereotype right?

00:23:39: Like...I think at some point the trope was quite funny.

00:23:44: It both prevents you from kind of going back narratively, but also I think like if you do a little bit of psychoanalysis on this it reveals that actually these people don't want to go back.

00:23:58: They would have just done it right?

00:23:59: Yeah!

00:24:00: But what is your forcefully going back...I feel that a lot of people in our industry or whatever we wanna call it not realize that might be an increasing possibility.

00:24:12: perhaps

00:24:15: I guess the second part of my point, when it got distracted as they do is that like The shame and guilt that struck these narratives.

00:24:21: I think the guilt Is a bit overplayed And the shame is a bit underplayed in the shame.

00:24:26: It's like.

00:24:26: i actually don't Like That.

00:24:28: um...I can't always pronounce everything because I-i like Got so much from education like virtually When I was young right?

00:24:35: Um..and I Don't Actually like like.

00:24:37: I still don't know the codes and the way that I speak.

00:24:39: sometimes you Can Still hear the accent or like I cuss all the time.

00:24:42: You Know like.

00:24:43: that's actually shameful.

00:24:45: And so if you have to go back, it would take quite a lot of bravery.

00:24:58: The upward mobility is what allows you to have the time and space to write a book.

00:25:02: So if you are down really mobile, and you have to take a bar job in your shitty hometown or whatever... You're not going to have that kind of energy to expand your mind about this!

00:25:12: And it's gonna be very shameful like just the nature right?

00:25:16: Yeah so its interesting what you say.

00:25:19: but because now I'm thinking We were talking about representation, but there's also this act of disappearing a lot of writers once they have moved up.

00:25:31: But there is also the chance that you won't have means production and space in time.

00:25:37: if we think work value to acknowledge your upward mobility was not linear.

00:25:47: so these kind ambiguous and fragile, they don't

00:25:53: find

00:25:54: a spot.

00:25:55: You can also be pushed out from the room that you forcefully tried to acquire space or move yourself into so... To me it would be political in its sense, adequate to describe what's going on right now And I think there is not much work addressing this kind of going back-and forth.

00:26:19: Even in the piece I talk about, The City.

00:26:21: you were talking about urban spaces.

00:26:23: It's been years that we have endless conversations on the fact that city life is no longer possible like it used to be—the crazy rental market.

00:26:33: If this is such a big argument how does it clash with transfusion class or class migrants and working-class memoirs?

00:26:41: They're still traditional.

00:26:43: so to me there's this kind of friction perhaps producing meaningful work because the general layout or frame has deeply, deeply changed.

00:26:58: But there's something that everyone can understand which is posing!

00:27:05: Can we talk a little bit about like fake working class literature?

00:27:10: Or like fake you know hardship stories...

00:27:15: Yeah, the passing before working class and or the faux-transfuge to class phenomenon which is you know there's tons of examples.

00:27:24: And it's something that has also had a long tradition.

00:27:27: Cristina Campo wrote piece called Scrittorio on show A Writer's Own Show in the sixties not aristocracy but she handled herself like this authors, middle-class authors that would pass off as working class just because they had a grandfather or great-great father workin' in the fields or in the mines.

00:27:52: And... In the sixties she was saying.

00:27:54: it's so funny you know to see the writer on TV all of sudden getting this kind of melancholic stare and talking about poverty in his own remote family.

00:28:08: but It brings out a laugh, if you think about this posing in the sixties and seventies when you actually had social mobility.

00:28:16: Right now I mean...I'm personally talking about generic western countries who had strong welfare state up until... some years ago, but right now we can say generically that there is such a war on poverty in a lot of cities and countries.

00:28:32: That it feels a little bit hallucinatory if not deeply cynical to want to pass off for working class just to acquire prestige.

00:28:40: this says... being a fraud that we did.

00:28:54: And so to me, this is deeply related and really boomed with the millennial ethos.

00:29:00: in a way I think they're exasperated at the idea of having certain street cred or authenticity factors.

00:29:12: working class, like non-working class authors don't care because the sense of shame and guilt I feel for newer generations doesn't have.

00:29:27: this still is not a stronghold as it used to be or they realize that even as you said economical financial prestige that i would buy to you maybe does no longer take case.

00:29:40: so the question or out of fictional books, or memoirs about being underclassed still valued so much right now.

00:29:51: I think this relates to the general question, is auto-fiction still such a big if it's not constantly recoded with new things?

00:30:01: So for me these novels can have a literary value and an economic value up to your extent where they are trying to bring you new things in.

00:30:12: Right now feels a little bit fosile i must say.

00:30:15: what autofiction or the novel in general.

00:30:22: That's a little bit of big statement, but I think out-of fiction and connection between classic scores if it doesn't deeply rethink itself gets no longer even valuable from market perspective.

00:30:40: In Europe, it's different.

00:30:41: I think in the U S...I don't know that was particularly valuable from a market perspective and most of its value as a market prospective at least form.

00:30:48: with way that I see-see The Way That Literary Market in the US Has Gone for the last fifteen years Was mostly like an import From Europe.

00:30:56: This sort American auto fiction authors that are kind Of clasped With Canos Guard And Erno and Rachel Klusk Are Ben Lerner who is his novel, this first novel set in Europe.

00:31:10: His most recent novel is about a European intellectual and Sheila Hetty who it's kind of her own thing I think...and drawing much more on like a feminist literary tradition than an auto-fictional one right?

00:31:26: So i don't want to talk too much about auto fiction because its my life long project to like, you know save its name or whatever.

00:31:35: But but to me it only means the creation of the effect that the narrator or the main character Right?

00:31:44: And you could formally apply that to like any kind of narrative.

00:31:48: Like, it can be any content as long as it seems realistic that Claudia de Rastanti... It happened to you!

00:31:55: So I think if you wanted to do some posing right...?

00:32:00: If you want to do class-posing....it would a really useful form.

00:32:05: To trick people and create A sneaky little assumption that maybe

00:32:10: you grew

00:32:11: up poor when your parents actually were lawyers or something.

00:32:15: I have a case study, i was so surprised When I wrote La Straniera, Strangers.

00:32:19: I Know It Was Received also as a class novel in the UK and France But it wasn't to focus too much on that In Germany Or US at all.

00:32:30: So how this same autofictional book product could be really read through different lenses.

00:32:39: Yeah,

00:32:39: and also I think it would be interesting to talk about

00:32:42: what

00:32:43: is the value of writing a novel as such?

00:32:46: As opposed to or work of you know creative nonfiction journalism sociology Or memoir.

00:32:54: because To me auto fiction The important thing Is actually that It remains fiction like the fiction part.

00:33:01: That's Like the Thing.

00:33:03: that is Interesting Because Why not write it as a memoir, if it were indeed like mostly true.

00:33:07: As people assume um.

00:33:09: and I wonder what you think?

00:33:10: Like because a lot of what-what you're talking about here is about memoir but also sometimes do talk about auto fiction some times to talk about the novel.

00:33:16: What can the novel do now?

00:33:18: Like what is the value of a novel?

00:33:20: It's interesting because A lot of

00:33:24: um

00:33:25: authors work in with autofiction based on class.

00:33:30: The origins or the classical French auto-socio biographie are writing almost always little episodes or chapters in this big autofictional installation.

00:33:42: If you think about Edouard Louis, Nierno, Didier Eribon... And I'm interested and i think you're also one of the authors that could understand us authors who are trying to transition from different forms.

00:33:58: So there's not a lot of case, you know writers who were switching from the essay, the auto-fiction and novel.

00:34:07: so

00:34:07: my

00:34:08: answer is deeply influenced by fact that I wrote novels then i wrote that autofictional book And than had a novel later where was talking about class perhaps in the way, as I said before large class portraits like Ferrante and Morante.

00:34:26: you know these household names.

00:34:29: unless it's only a literature they're trying to talk about The Underclass And The Margins.

00:34:35: What was valuable is that for me?

00:34:37: It allowed space For different readers more intensive as a work and labor experience, if we have to talk about time.

00:34:51: You're

00:34:51: talking about fiction?

00:34:53: Yeah in fiction it completely up versed my idea of you know what's the cost of extracting?

00:35:00: What is the costs of crafting, what are the costs for mining and imagining.

00:35:05: Even coming up with fictional names in your character.

00:35:11: That really hard!

00:35:13: I work as a translator mostly so when i translate it a lot memoir out of fictional, which is a lesser degree of fiction compared to a novel mode because it's highly compatible.

00:35:29: Whereas when I'm working on the novel It has to be A slot Of time energies in ideas that i can also think about for long-long Time but if requires a different kind of dedication, which is also an economical dedication in a way.

00:35:48: So to me the reason why we are complaining that there aren't big novels because... We're always obsessed with one of the big questions as you said about identity and authenticity.

00:35:59: debate was like who can afford this?

00:36:02: And right now I'm like who really can afford a novel knowing it's not going?

00:36:07: unless you're going into very far worlds, let's say.

00:36:13: Vampires, dragons... Let's say the conventional realistic novel.

00:36:20: who can afford it?

00:36:21: And perhaps maybe this could be reckless.

00:36:24: but I was thinking also about that length has shortened for this kind of novels.

00:36:29: Yeah,

00:36:30: I mean initially

00:36:31: they are not drawing from genre fiction.

00:36:33: you know that's how you make a bulky novel and i know because that's what i did you go to genre.

00:36:37: but if you're trying to build a real let's say realistic conventional traditional novel or what it kind of evokes in our minds the length is shorted.

00:36:47: don't you think that's related?

00:36:48: yeah!

00:36:49: i mean i think like for the last ten years people were like oh the novels are getting shorter media, but it's also I think like the pressures of-of The Market and...and you know.

00:37:03: Like which came first?

00:37:04: The chicken or the egg?

00:37:05: Where people had less time and less money to produce a long sort well researched novel?

00:37:11: Or is that like People were demanding?

00:37:14: You know people are buying these short little unafictional tales Which basically gossip right.

00:37:20: But i wanted To go back too an essay for Berlin Review in twenty-twenty four about, like the needs and trend to move beyond auto fiction but still use some of the lessons in hybridity that we learned from it.

00:37:37: And you weren't really writing... You didn't think if yourself was writing a memoir?

00:37:41: But people kept saying oh your're writing a memorandum!

00:37:44: Your idea of that book changed over course of writing it.

00:37:47: I wonder.

00:37:48: this is very common thing.

00:37:49: also female author specifically would be like, it's not autobiographical.

00:37:55: Like It's Not even though obviously was and I wonder why you had that reaction which is very common.

00:38:05: You know i also sort of did as well

00:38:10: Weird, like the cognitive biases we have.

00:38:13: I was working on Las Treñeras and Strangers and now in a writer's residency in Upstate New York all of a sudden at dinner there is this big you know?

00:38:21: Like literary fight between Knosskardt and Elena Ferranti.

00:38:25: And it was interesting how some of the writers that the table would frame Elena Ferrante work as auto-fictional and Knoscard were words, which is in every kind of way.

00:38:39: It's the glorified statement about a fictional as fictional.

00:38:44: it was the length, it was tone...it was gender-of-the-author to me.

00:38:49: I was hallucinating anyway And i felt how that complete subversion our ideas sometimes doesn't have to do nothing at all with the book we are reading, you know?

00:39:03: We suddenly decide that the frame-to-read work... That's because it is a domestic experience of women.

00:39:09: Anonymous author.

00:39:11: and even when there was an absurd list of the greatest novels in the twentieth century by The New York Times, Elena Fernandes' second volume was her first book which was voted for by the jurors And its pin down as out of fictional And away.

00:39:30: if you think about that, I Being a woman, and this is where you know my gender studies in my feminist sense come forward.

00:39:40: I was very aware of the risk of saying i'm writing about My family?

00:39:44: My class upbringing?

00:39:45: My

00:39:45: migration?".

00:39:46: And all- A lot of writers around me would be oh You're writing a memoir!

00:39:50: It still felt shameful like ten years ago...I want to say no This isn't not a memory.

00:39:55: But then years later.. I am working on a novel Also historical novels, genre novel A lot things that happen there And I'm surrounded by the same writers.

00:40:05: What are you working on?

00:40:06: and i'm saying like, i'm writing a novel as if i was hiding because The value of the novel dropped.

00:40:13: You know...and it was also almost A guilty and shameful idea at that point That you were not Working on yourself and you're.

00:40:21: we're not eviscerating your life without Understanding that even out-of fiction has so many genres within itself in a way.

00:40:31: So what is out of fiction, it's not this homogeneous experience.

00:40:36: You know taking yourself as a character.

00:40:38: there are so many things that can go wrong and also be surprising while you write the kind of book.

00:40:43: but let say in typical conventions yes my writing in past few years was really obsessed with this idea of shame and guilt and cost find it absurd that these conversations around are.

00:41:04: there is a lot of conversation, a lot class representation and maybe less on production which was really important for working-class writers.

00:41:14: Yeah you know if you think of some like... If you think about Dickens right?

00:41:17: Which he... You know or do we have like old quote unquote traditional English language novels class is like a setting, right?

00:41:28: It's set of historical conditions but also it has set of historic conditions that drive the plot.

00:41:37: The interesting part would not exist if not for these class transformations that happen in Dickens and creates really dynamic interest literature to me.

00:41:51: I think people don't want, like writers do not want to take the implications of a sudden transfusion of cash or a sudden fall from grace and imagine... Or describe as in case it may be all of the details.

00:42:13: All of the mechanisms that mean this happens.. And there's sort of desire say, here's the class situation.

00:42:27: And then not like... I mean this is kind of a silly cliche point.

00:42:31: but not examine what is going to happen.

00:42:34: and that also has to do with auto fiction which so many auto fictional novels have no plot.

00:42:40: nothing happens in them right?

00:42:44: There isn't one story about representing an atmosphere.

00:42:48: you know i like alot these novels.

00:42:50: uh, I got a huge tax bill and then i had to borrow money from my friend.

00:42:54: And then my friend got mad at me and then my boyfriend dumped me because I was complaining and I was depressed.

00:42:58: and then like how'd you do this?

00:43:00: Because it's on the street!

00:43:01: Like... You know met this guy.. This kind of chain-off reactions which we associate with traditional novel is gone and I am wondering if you have good answer for why that is And also if it has something to do with heightened awareness of stereotypes and a desire not represent stereotypes, even sometimes are true?

00:43:36: Yeah,

00:43:36: or they're true.

00:43:37: I read this interview with you when we were talking about studying anthropology and beginning your anthropology courses And the professor said at the begin of class just so that by end-of-the-class You will find Southern Italians often fighting and Germans very rigid.

00:43:51: The traffic in Rome is really bad.

00:43:52: All these stereotypes come from somewhere.

00:43:55: This made me mad But thinking on it has changed since you know you're eighteen.

00:44:04: Yeah, that was the most useful creative writing advice I got.

00:44:08: For my poor late professor... ...I wanted to drop out of college as soon as I heard it because this is how am i gonna learn?

00:44:16: How do we make all identity a fixed stable identities or what will you assume for being such an explode?

00:44:23: but they are immensely useful!

00:44:26: You have to stop constantly Revisering of the character and off-the-self, you know You cannot.

00:44:34: it can not be a never end bleeding character even in auto fiction I would say.

00:44:40: And so perhaps more.

00:44:42: A lot of energy that is dedicated to dad should Be redistributed In a smarter way.

00:44:51: Mm-hmm in studying a little bit as something that is very current uh i would call them um.

00:44:59: with the editing of The Peace going back and forth, we came up with the idea of microclasses.

00:45:04: Even you know...the process of leaving this city, going back to the country maybe coming back.

00:45:08: there's a lot newer great areas in between the processes of social mobility but as you said..this requires coming-up with a new lexicon, come-in-up when you stereotypes, even when you metaphors around money.

00:45:26: This can be also quite fun and exciting, instead of going back to what you know.

00:45:32: I mean... You need to read those books!

00:45:34: And as i said..I was shaped by them and love the reading them but right now ,i no longer find them useful as they do.

00:45:41: .And im kind-of hopeful for newer working class writers.

00:45:46: that day would focus specifically on your saying why is this not happening in auto fiction?

00:45:51: I always imagine auto fiction ...you know ..as a room with let's say three, five mirrors and you're focusing on how the mirror makes you bigger.

00:46:00: it makes you smaller but still pretty much your outline.

00:46:03: The way is downsized or enlarged being resized.

00:46:08: that isn't in the main focus.

00:46:09: so if the writing is set on that specifically thats already a big endeavor.

00:46:20: smaller characters, micro-dynamics because being focused on them suddenly takes you into the realm of a more affictional product.

00:46:29: Because there's only certain amount of set voices that you can have in and out of fictional work unless it is deeply experimental.

00:46:39: but thats not what we are talking about here.

00:46:41: so perhaps maybe working class novels would be useful.

00:46:49: talking or creating a new setting, class-setting for the kind of things we're talking about from this new scenario.

00:46:57: I think it's gonna happen in a novel first and then when its acquired uh...and becomes stable than autofiction can play with.

00:47:07: but you know It takes dickens to ride working class memoirs or auto fiction.

00:47:15: I think it's not the dignity or the hierarchy, but reality needs to be processed through a novel before it can become real for your out of fiction.

00:47:26: At least that was my experience.

00:47:28: Do you

00:47:28: mean reality need to process by reading a novel?

00:47:32: Growing up poor... I needed dickens Before i could write about my own poverty.

00:47:39: and so To me My understanding Of how to handle class in a literary work came first for the novel.

00:47:47: And this is why I often go back to Dickens and compared it to the transfusion class sociological writing, even you know Balzac Ferrantes de la Dickens let's say come before not only historically but as set of tools.

00:48:06: they came before Edibon and Geoff Dyer or whoever.

00:48:10: And can I ask like a very basic, but a very broad and annoying question that many writers are often asked.

00:48:15: But I'm going to ask you anyway in this context which is why... This is so annoying!

00:48:22: Why

00:48:23: do you write?

00:48:25: Because oh i needed to see it before I could do it.

00:48:31: Does that mean you wanted to do it before?

00:48:33: You read Dickens or something?

00:48:35: where does the desire come from these stories.

00:48:41: Yeah, that's interesting.

00:48:49: I have a very in this sense stereotypical experience after my migration from the US to Italy.

00:48:56: i was deeply isolated, angry and I wanted to write stories that had nothing to do about my life but certainly were about people who didn't find a place unless it was in the short story or novel.

00:49:10: So you know... The reckless, the outsider, the poor, the addict-I had so many addiction short stories and they never injected anything!

00:49:17: That's how i think.

00:49:19: But It feels relevant now that i think of this idea finding an avatar misfit for me when i started writing But I became a writer, I think when suddenly engaged with the novel.

00:49:33: This is not me being a snob.

00:49:35: I write personal essays out of fiction but that's what really allowed to have more expensive idea about why did I write?

00:49:47: The pleasure making up things was really, being high for the first time perhaps.

00:49:53: It's kind of high that I was looking forward and then it doesn't come...I don't know about you but never came from out-of fiction.

00:50:00: to me Out Of Fiction is painful because as i said its maybe easier sometimes compared work in a novel But it does....i think..i need writing a novel to go through out of fiction Then going back into the novel learning new things writing in the other stuff.

00:50:21: So to me, maybe it's this kind of transferring water like a you know, a demented child from one class to another.

00:50:30: so that is my relationship with writing and picture right

00:50:33: now!

00:50:34: I knew very well why i started writing.

00:50:37: Why do keep doing it?

00:50:39: It was something is ringing in a new way.

00:50:43: And I don't want to be...I mean, i don't care talking about oh nobody's reading.

00:50:48: there's no money and the AI it's not that but after a certain amount of work you realize that kind of literary career that you imagined.

00:50:58: in this sense Oh!

00:50:59: I'm gonna accomplish This kind of body-of-work.

00:51:05: Does our writer ever stop?

00:51:07: That what im asking right now.

00:51:10: Does someone who writes stops?

00:51:12: There are cases of writers who suddenly stopped.

00:51:15: I don't know, that's... Yeah!

00:51:16: I think surely or you know it is difficult to say because so many examples we have were like women from the twentieth century who didn't stop.

00:51:24: but if they looked at their biographies then maybe they stopped for reasons out of control.

00:51:34: and of course there also You know, in my life I'm thirty-five.

00:51:41: Like...I remember when i started reading like literary journalism and cultural criticism And there would be all these kind of writers who were talked about.

00:51:49: They're the sexy young writer Who had one book.

00:51:52: It was this sexy debut.

00:51:56: This person is going to be big.

00:51:57: Then they just disappeared and never wrote anything again.

00:52:00: That's another Kind of person who probably will not be recorded in much history or like.

00:52:06: maybe that we won't be reading our books and in fifty years, but.

00:52:11: The only other example I can think about is the people you know especially directors are like i'm retiring it's my last movie i'm retired against my last book and then they Right, do another one because they can't say

00:52:22: away.

00:52:23: We have a limited life.

00:52:24: yeah I'm starting to realize that it would take an entire you know support system and live-to.

00:52:30: imagine even doing something else but not out of creating like inspirational mystical reasons in a very programmatic way.

00:52:39: It takes an entire new life and support system to do something different.

00:52:45: Thanks so much Claudio is great talk too.

00:52:48: Thank You!

00:53:01: That was Lauren Euler speaking with Claudia de Restanti.

00:53:04: If you want to watch a longer version of their conversation, check out our YouTube channel where you'll find extended episodes and bonus content... ...with all the guests we've had on Airlift.

00:53:15: You can also read Claudia's essay Literature for The Downwardly Mobile in our reader number seven which is Out In Late June And of course you can also find it at BLNReview.de the website where we publish all our stories & audio content.

00:53:31: As I mentioned at the top, we are a reader-funded magazine.

00:53:34: Your subscription literally allows us to keep doing this work.

00:53:38: This episode was edited by Caitlin Roberts.

00:53:41: I'm Tobias Harbourkorn editor of Berlin Review.

00:53:44: See you next time.