Beato lui

It is impossible to put an end to Berlusconi’s novel. It is not punctuated by chapters or events that follow a temporal logic, the characters appear elusive, the periods are full of incisors and subordinates, the notes in the margins constantly evolving. An editor’s work would be defeated.
Arcisilvio’s story is rather a jumble of scenes, of performances, of short novellas where it is possible to state one truth and its opposite.
Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a man of the theater, knows how to unveil all of Silvio’s roles: playwright, set designer, prompter, light giver, performer and director. The curtain never comes down; the protagonist continues and will forever continue to tread the stage because he has imagined, constructed and polished each of his planks.
Buttafuoco thus finds himself, as the great capocomedian that he is, narrating the comedy of the Cavaliere, whose uniqueness coincides with Italy itself. Every day is the right day to bring out this book but every day the text has to be put back in place, and therefore there is no other criterion than that of art, theatrical improvisation, and giammai journalism, to be able to reconstruct the stage machine and tell the extraordinary epic of the Cavaliere.
All genres suit him, all genres are limiting. From Totò versus Maciste to Armata Brancaleone, from Elisir d’amore to Shakespeare’s Richard III, from Molière to Goldoni.
Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a great acrobat of the word and devotee of mysticism, and thus of the invisible, identifies and stitches up the supporting pieces, identifies and connects new dots that portray the most contemporary character of contemporaneity, the one who, like Mary Quant, invented the miniskirt and changed the times forever. Let’s get with it.