Advice for Writers: Giulio Mozzi

Showing posts with label Giulio Mozzi. Show all posts

Saturday, December 13, 2025

Giulio Mozzi on “Why You Have to Love Some Writers and Hate Others”

This post is a guest blog by the celebrated Italian writer Giulio Mozzi. For a full bio of Giulio, please see below.

Whenever a writer is interviewed, it’s almost a given that they’ll be asked questions like:

“What books or writers have shaped you?”

“Who are your favorite writers?”

“What books are always on your bedside table?”

Giulio Mozzi

The writer’s answer is usually a sort of declaration of love for a certain book, or a certain writer. Of course, the answer is also a way of positioning oneself in an imaginary literary landscape. If you say you were shaped by Joyce/Musil/Proust, that’s not the same as saying you were shaped by Stevenson/Poe/Lovecraft. Tracing your influences to Perec/Queneau/Robbe-Grillet isn’t the same as saying your literary lineage goes through Tolkien/Herbert/Le Guin, etc. That assumes that these trios—I don’t know why, but they often come in trios—have meaning and an internal consistency. In some circles, James Joyce is the coolest, but he’s mocked by other groups. Another example: Stephen King is the Great Master in some circles, and simply ignored by others.

But I’d like to ask the opposite question: “What or who are the books or writers you just can’t stand, the ones that make you think, ‘I’d like to write a bit like everyone, but definitely not like them’”?

The history of literature, especially the history of modern literature, can be seen as the story of every generation's revolt against the previous one. The revolt of the naturalists against the sentimentality of the romantics, the revolt of the symbolists against the naturalists, the revolt of the futurists against everyone, the revolt of the new narrative writers against the rebellions of the neo-avant-gardists, the revolt of the postmodernists against the new narrative writers, etc. Generations follow one another; sons kill their fathers; daughters search for their mothers: it’s a continuous progression.

So: I believe that in the formative history of every writer, it’s important not just to love certain works but to hate others.

In the years when writing first hovered around me or within me (your choice!), and I hadn’t yet written much but was about to, my love for Marco Lodoli’s short story collection Grande Raccordo or—and to a lesser, though decisive extent—Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s Separate Rooms—were both undoubtedly important for me. But equally important was my hatred, my truly furious hatred, for Andrea De Carlo’s Techniques of Seduction.

It's easy to dislike writers whose books are just bad, sloppy, or commercial. By commercial, I don’t mean mere entertainment—that’s something different. It’s all too easy to tear apart the writing of a romance novelist like Rosamunde Pilcher, for example. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the hatred that can arise toward a true writer, whose seriousness, artistic quality, technical ability, and historical importance can’t be denied; but is someone whose work is not only unbearable to you—they serve almost as a reverse fetish.

I’ve always wondered why I can't stand male English novelists (I mean English-English: Irish and Scottish are another matter entirely). Of course, there are exceptions (Henry Fielding! Charles Dickens!), but in general, when I try to read those writers, after a while I say to myself: “I just can’t do this.” Among contemporary writers, for example, I read Ian McEwan (who, despite his last name, isn’t Scottish) and I say to myself, “He’s so good! And such a pain in the ass!” Not to mention the Victorian writers en masse (and the related films by James Ivory). On the other hand, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, etc.—I like them all.

Among the obligatory granddaddies of today’s Italian writers, I see Alberto Moravia and Italo Calvino mentioned over and over. It gets on my nerves that those two are talked about so often. I no longer know what to do with Calvino: it seems downright scandalous to me that a writer with such a modest, narrow, and stunted idea of literature was such a powerful editor. His American Lectures is an amazingly unimportant book. As for the Moravia, I appreciate his revolt against D’Annunzio-ism (even though I love Gabriele D’Annunzio’s poetry). But I confess that Moravia’s most celebrated novels (especially The Conformist) have always seemed obtusely ideological to me and nothing more. The Moravia who forgets he’s Moravia, on the other hand, as in Roman Tales, is very, very beautiful.

Please note: these are not critical judgments. They’re my reactions in a particular mood, my character traits. I don’t claim any validity for them. I would never argue that Calvino and Moravia should be removed from anthologies. Just the opposite! But maybe for the anthologies, I wouldn’t choose the usual pieces.

I believe that when you start to become what you are, you also become that through opposition. Through what you reject. Through hatred, even.

I’m a little frightened, for example, by certain students of mine, who seem to universally love all great literature. “Is that even possible?” I’d like to ask them. “Is it possible that between the classic Italian epic poets Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, you like them both exactly the same? Is it possible that you love Leopardi as much as Manzoni?” I can’t. Tasso is beautiful, but I love Ariosto. Leopardi wrote a few sublime poems, but I love Manzoni. Reading Morante’s Lies and Sorcery or her Arturo’s Island is a wonderful adventure, but I love Balestrini’s Tristano!

So, ask yourself: if you write, when you write, against whom or what do you write? What or who do you want to be absolutely different from?

Giulio Mozzi has published more than 25 books—as editor, fiction writer, and poet—with leading Italian presses such as Einaudi, and Mondadori. His first short story collection, This Is the Garden, won the Premio Mondello. One of his stories appears in Mondadori’s anthology of the best Italian stories of the twentieth century. Giulio Mozzi has taught at several universities, and in 2011 he founded his own school for writers, la Bottega di narrazione (The Story Store).

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Zack’s new book of poetry, The Kama Sutra for Senior Citizens and Other Poems on Aging. Order in the USA Order in the UK

Zack’s most recent translation, The Water Drinkers and Other Sketches of Paris in the Romantic Era by Henry Murger

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Writing Tips from Italy: Guest blog by Giulio Mozzi and Laura Pugno

A friend gave me a copy of a wonderful manual for writers by the Italian authors Giulio Mozzi and Laura Pugno. Their book is full of great ideas and prompts.

Link to: Oracular Manual for Poets

Though the book is particularly for poets, I’ve translated three sections that I think are of interest to all writers. Grazie, Giulio and Laura for giving me permission to reprint these!

Co-author Laura Pugno

Co-author Giulio Mozzi

Do words have souls?

A poet considers every word and every thing as if it were alive. They might actually be alive. What do they want to say?

A good poet is an animist who looks at things as if they were saturated with life, death, stories, and words. And in the same vein, a poet looks at every word they hear, read, say, or write as if it were a living being. Not only that: a good poet is a matchmaker who brings together words and things based on their affinities and preferences. To sum it up: a good poet is like that clever servant who pretends to do the bidding of things and words, but who in reality is the one in charge, the one who masters them, and bends them to meet a particular need in a piece of writing.

Who lives in your poems?

The “us,” that unknown. How many homes can you make in it that you’ve never even thought about? Collective poetry, choral poetry. There’s a whole world out there: the others.

With your own voice, unique and private, you, as a poet, are the founder of a community. But how is it possible that poetry, which is such a lyrical and solitary form of expression, can create a community? Well, each of us is a person who belongs to humanity, so in each of us there’s something shared or held in common with others, maybe with a few others, maybe with many, or maybe even with everyone else. When you speak as a poet, with that shared something, you’re speaking the ”us.” Even when you use the “I.” Even when it seems you’re speaking completely impersonally. As the philosopher Rocco Ronchi once said, “Communication…is not a form of transmission. At its root, communication means to create a common ground, to fasten together a community, even if it is a minority, and to give that community identity and recognizable traits. Communication is the creation of a sense of community.” Poetry does not communicate by transmission, it fosters commonality, founds a community. To quote the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska: “[Jean-Paul] Sartre said one of the most horrific things ever uttered: ‘Hell is other people.’ («L’enfer, c’est les autres.») What does that even mean, that hell is other people? In fact, I would say that other people are the true paradise. Doesn’t ‘other people’ include loved ones, neighbors—not just anybody? And I’m not only referring to lovers here, but also to relations, friends, the care of a neighbor, etc. Where would we be without others? Who would we be? Nothing. A hell.”

Rearrange the poetry books on your shelves.

Discover the books you forgot you had.

When you’re a new employee in a bookstore, the first day on the job you’re taught that you have to dust the books. Every day, when there aren’t many customers in the shop, you run a cloth over one, two, or three shelves and give them a good swipe. Romano Montroni, the founder of Italy’s Feltrinelli Bookstore chain, explained why, in his book Selling Souls: The Bookseller’s Profession. Montroni said that this is useful for memorizing each book, the author, the title, and a couple of sentences from the back cover. Similarly, if you have a few shelves of poetry books at home (and I certainly hope you do!), take the time every once in a while (maybe once a month?) to rearrange your books. You might reorganize them by author, or maybe chronologically, or by the colors of their spines, or by their size, or by when you bought them, or according to which ones you like the most or the least. This will help you (you’ll see, it works!) to find forgotten books, to resume interrupted readings, to read again passages you haven’t looked at for ages, to discover that, just as you have changed over time, so have your books.

From Oracolo manuale per poete e poeti, @2020 by Giulio Mozzi and Laura Pugno, published by Sonzogno di Marsiglio Editori. Reprinted by permission of the authors. Translation from the Italian © 2022 by Zack Rogow.

Zack’s memoir about his father, the writer Lee Rogow: Hugging My Father’s Ghost

Zack’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies