Sugarpaste Ballet Slipper

Philip Roth

"Italy is a nation of writers. See, I think, that many more people who write, what you see. .. I mean . You see the paradox? "

"I understand."

I was trying to go to the bathroom. But Darius did not understand. He held me there in half. The mention of his head I had done, the rush I had expressed, but did not seem to understand.

"When you say that you make, what do you mean?"

"What the hell does that mean?"
"I mean. Who told you that you're a writer?"

"Ah, in that sense. It 'something I have already asked. I was wondering if I was a year or not. If there was a kind of license. I thought I had the conviction of to be a writer when some casa editrice mi avesse pubblicato..."

"Così è andata, no? Hai fatto quel fumetto per la Francia, mi hanno detto che è andato bene..."

"Chi te lo ha detto si è sbagliato di grosso. Comunque, anche dopo aver firmato un contratto non è cambiato niente."

"Quindi non ti senti ancora uno scrittore."
"Ora sì."

"E come lo sai?"
"Lo so perché scrivo. Tutto qui. Continuo a scrivere. Vedi, scrivere è diverso da qualsiasi altra cosa si possa fare. E' l'unica azione umana che non ha un committente."
"This is not true. You will have a publishing house that tells you what to do about your job, a public, things like that ..."
"No, Dario. I speak of the beginning. Genesis. Before the publishing house, before the public. In the case of comic books before I even thought the designer. Now and then you can think of something and feel the need to write some part. One of the few moments of total freedom. You should try it. "

"do not follow. Do not you think you should have to define this success?"

"No, anyway, I'm sorry, I gotta pee."
"Oh, I'm sorry you did not understand."

"But we continue this conversation."

"Okay."

Dario out of the bathroom was gone. He took photographs and he was gone. I meant to read this passage from Roth months ago I had read on Wikipedia. And that was what had convinced me that I was a writer, although I know that Dario mold panels and advertising photography for his small company of solar installations.

"Today, every now and then, turning back, back on my life as a long speech that I heard. The rhetoric is sometimes original, sometimes nice, sometimes inconsistent (the speech of the unknown) sometimes manic, sometimes practical, sometimes as the sudden prick of a needle, and I listen from time immemorial: How think, not how to think, how to behave, how not to behave, and those who admire those who hate, and when cos'abbracciare escape, what is exciting, what's exhausting, what is commendable, what surface, what is left , what is disgusting, and how to stay a pure soul. It seems to me that talking is not an obstacle for anyone. This is perhaps a consequence of my going around years with the air of one who had a great need for someone to addressing the word. But whatever the reason, the book of my life is a book of voices. When I wonder how I got where I am, the answer surprises me: "Listening."

Philip Roth