Interview with Pier Francesco Grasselli by Maria Giulia Dolcini
You may not know that in Portofino, in a picturesque apartment just above the Gritta, lives the most controversial Italian author, who has over twenty-three titles to his credit including novels, collections of stories and poems, treatises on esotericism and metaphysics. A politically incorrect writer known for his unconventionality, as well as for the originality of his style and for his eclecticism, whose most extreme novels, accused of sexism, homophobia and pornography, have caused a stir in the Italian literary world, dividing the critics.
We are talking about Pier Francesco Grasselli, whose avowedly anti-mainstream writings have a common denominator, the love for Portofino and for Italy, where they are often set. Such is the case of the trilogy published by Mursia, a saga on the spoiled youth of Emilia, their flings and hidden vices. It is composed of the novels «L’Ultimo Cuba Libre» (The Last Cuba Libre), «All’Inferno ci vado in Porsche» (If I have to go to Hell, It Will Be in a Porsche) and “Vivere da Morire” (Live till I Die), and the backdrop of its final volume are the square, the luxurious villas and the trendy clubs of the pearl of Tigullio.
And that is not all: Portofino also appears several times in the novels that make up the famous “erotic autobiography” of the Emilian writer, published like the previous trilogy by Mursia and with explosive titles such as «Fanculo Amore» (Fuck Love), «Tromba Daria» and the more recent «I Maschilisti. Autobiografia Erotica» (The Chauvinists. An Erotic Autobiography), a real gauntlet to political correctness and “cancel culture”.
But alongside the “scabrous” works, poetic anthologies, initiation novels and essays on metaphysics testify to the versatility, the depth of thought and breadth of horizons of the Emilian author.
To tell the truth, for the variety of themes dealt with and stylistic elements used, for the versatility he shows in the use of language, alternating very different registers according to the quality of the work and the theme treated, for the contradictions that the continuous movement of this author between the sacred and the profane, between the high peaks of metaphysics and the slums of pornography – passing through the “middle ground” of humor, drama and social criticism – for all these reasons Pier Francesco Grasselli can be considered the most controversial and interesting Italian writer.
We met him for a short interview.
I Maschilisti (Mursia, 2022)
«This novel includes adult content and extremely crude passages that some people may consider inappropriate, discriminatory, sexist, homophobic, offensive and detrimental to the dignity of ethnic, minority and religious denominations. As far as I am concerned, I am against any discrimination, but when it comes to literary stories and characters, I do not accept restrictions and I categorically reject the new “fascism” of do-goodery and politically correctness which claims to impose thematic and linguistic limits. My personal opinion is that today the sense of provocation has been completely lost and that we tend to take everything too seriously. This is turning society into dullness, which instead of reflecting, understanding and learning, is now limited to “deleting”.» This is the author’s disclaimer, opening his novel «I Maschilisti». In this case Pier Francesco Grasselli’s work is a raw, provocative and nonconformist story that will appeal to those who can no longer stand the “hypocritical dictatorship of do-gooders”, as the author underlines.
Who is Pier Francesco Grasselli?
Pier Francesco Grasselli starts his career with the scandalous, “damned” trilogy published by Mursia and consisting of the novels «L’ultimo Cuba Libre» (Mursia, 2006), «All’Inferno ci vado in Porsche» (Mursia, 2007) and «Vivere da Morire» (Mursia 2010), an intriguing “fiction” that describes the bad habits of the “old money youth” of Emilia, drifting from a holiday in Cortina to one in Portofino. Referred by critics as “bad novels” (Panorama) and “Portrait of a generation” (Libero), these first scathing works impose Pier Francesco Grasselli in the Italian literary scene for the originality of the narrative style and the harshness of the events he tells (two university dissertations have been dedicated to these works of Grasselli).
More or less in the same period, the amusing novels «Ho scaricato Miss Italia» (Dumping Miss Italia, Mursia, 2008) and «Fanculo Amore» (Mursia 2009) were also released, to be followed, ten years later, by the hilarious «Tromba Daria».
Among the renditions of literary characters, we find Sinbad the sailor and Don Giovanni, the legendary seducer whose genesis is described by Grasselli, transposed to the twenty-first century in two novels illustrated by Silvano Scolari (former Disney and Marvel illustrator and co-illustrator of Star Wars comics): «Don Giovanni all’Inferno» and «Le nuove avventure di Don Giovanni», both published by the Florentine Porto Seguro, founded by the writer Paolo Cammilli.
But Grasselli is also a poet: the collection of poems «Sempre meglio che lavorare – Donne, solitudini e cocktail» (Always Better than Working – Women, Solitudes and Cocktails), published by thedotcompany editions in 2018, brings together almost all the poetry written by the author between 1998 and 2018. A second collection of poems is now available, «Poesie d’Amore a una Stronza» (Love Poems to a Bitch, Edizioni Il Foglio Letterario).
«La Ricerca di Sé stessi» (The Search for Yourself), an illustrated work in five volumes, is unquestionably the opus magnum of this multifaceted author. The protagonist of the “Search” retraces the path trodden by the author through the boundless lands of mysticism and metaphysics, discovering and identifying the principles of which the particular branch of knowledge called “esotericism” is made up, those universal principles from which all religions stem and that are common to all metaphysical currents of thought from the dawn of time until today.
Grasselli has recently published, for the folks of Edizioni OM, the illustrated initiation novel «Leonardo cuoco» ((Leonardo the Cook, 2021), which sees as the protagonist a young Leonardo da Vinci committed to opening a vegetarian tavern first in Florence and then in Milan, under the aegis of Ludovico il Moro. Numerous illustrious characters appear alongside this new and hilarious version of Leonardo – who for the occasion is a vegetarian and an animalist, as well as “initiated into the mysteries”: Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Savonarola, Ludovico il Moro and even Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa and Raymond Llull (by virtue of a spell). In the many conversations, Leonardo and his interlocutors address topics such as vegetarianism, raw food, psychosomatic medicine, physiognomy, magic, alchemy and even the secret of eternal youth.
Then came the short novel «La Musa» (The Muse, Edizioni Pendragon 2021), an erotic-magical story with Nabokovian echoes, set in the quiet province of Emilia.
Among the new releases, we like to mention the essay on esoteric topics published by Gruppo Macro «Le Chiavi del Sapere. Come lo Spirito Plasma la Materia.» (The Keys of Knowledge. How Spirit Shapes Matter).
Interview
Your literature is not only very prolific, but also very diverse and applies to a variety of genres. You write esoteric texts and recently even brought Sinbad to Portofino. Chemistry of the seducer and intellectual vivacity flow copiously in your work. Is there a tormented soul behind that pleasure-loving appearance?
I have always been restless and exuberant in many respects, but this has allowed me to experience a variety of different situations and points of view so that in the end I have come out enriched.
What is the greatest luxury for a man and for a writer?
The greatest luxury and success, Thoreau also says, for a man and even more so for a writer, that is, for one who has an artistic inclination, is to live his life as he wishes. Today, for many reasons, the majority of people do exactly the opposite and this is very sad. Clearly, for a man and even more so for a writer, the fundamental problem is that of sustenance.
Lately the arrows of those who advocate the politically correct, at any cost and at every level of social life, have resounded loudly. You declare yourself “against the fascism of do-gooders” and against an exhibited and widespread ideological orientation aimed at not hurting anyone. What harm would these trends do, and to whom?
These falsely feel-good cultural trends cause damage to culture itself, flattening it, annihilating the critical spirit, which in fact the new generations are almost completely lacking, except for a mild sense of irony beyond which lie the shadows of a nearly desperate cynicism. These trends, of clear American origin, are producing what we have been seeing around us in the cultural and artistic fields for some years now, that is to say works that are increasingly anodyne, dull, homogenized in language and content, light-hearted and polite and, ultimately, utterly superficial, they do not really get the brain going. Cases of disruptive literary, musical or cinematographic works such as those that characterized the last thirty years of the last century are now very rare. If any artist is welcomed and promoted by the mainstream today, they are first and foremost rigorously castrated and rendered harmless to the system itself.
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Your novels are provocative, but also terribly candid, explicit, daring in form and substance. Partly because of this, you have included a disclaimer in “The Chauvinists”. What if the ones to find some of the writing difficult to tolerate are precisely the women you claim to love so intensely, and not just the categories of people which might feel offended?
What I have discovered is that real women, those who love their womanliness and love men who are truly masculine, those who do not claim, rightly and sensibly so, to be equal to men in every way and recognize the objective biological and spiritual differences between the two sexes, those who do not feel “objectified” at all times simply because a man is being a man and may be looking at them with desire or attempts an approach, these women, I have learned, appreciate even the more “daring” passages of that and other equally provocative books of mine. I believe these are women who love those who speak the truth beyond the hypocrisies of today’s world.
I think writing is an act of responsibility, and I sense that you do, too. So, following this line of thought, what risks are the very new generations facing, the ones who, because of ignorant, incautious and self-righteous censors, have been deprived of milestones of world literature?
They face that condition of ignorance and superficiality in which they are already immersed up to their neck – but the blame here also lies with addictive technology and social networks that have alienated the new generations. The only result of this condition of ignorance and superficiality can only be dissatisfaction and depression. It is no coincidence that, unlike previous generations, members of Generation Z are almost all being treated by psychologists. Because the human being was born to explore the depths of his soul and the universe around him, and if this possibility is taken away from him, it is as if the entire possibility of evolution is taken away from him: life loses meaning and purpose.
I was lucky, or maybe I was particularly apt, I do not know. The fact is that before I turned twenty I came across the right books, as well as the right circumstances, so that I began to ask myself questions, investigated the mysteries of existence by following the paths of literature and philosophy and studying the teachings of spiritual masters. This gave me strength and stability, because it broadened my horizons by enabling me to understand many of the laws of nature that are not yet “endorsed” by official science. It is the reason why I wrote books such as “The Keys to Knowledge. How Spirit Shapes Matter,” “Leonardo the Cook” and “The Search for Self.”
There is an illuminating excerpt in “I Maschilisti” (The Chauvinists), in which the protagonist good-naturedly mocks the new “bookgrammers”, people who compulsively engage in taking pictures of themselves, with one or more books next to their uncovered bodies. It almost simulates binge-reading, wher are treated like any other object, yet this paradoxically clashes with people’s diminishing capacity to pay attention to the contents of the literary page. What do you think?
Social network users lack patience, and the determination to go deeper. Not all contents can be conveyed in reduced doses so they cannot be found in these contexts. As for the literary exhibitionism I stigmatized in the novel, it is an example of an area where form takes over substance, a phenomenon we detect everywhere today.
You often state that philosophy, especially metaphysical philosophy, is the only chance humanity has if it wants to save itself. Can you explain this concept to us?
The aberrations of modern thought, wrongly called “progressive,” are possible only because of the total lack of depth and accuracy in the reasoning of contemporary society. Metaphysical knowledge, also called esoteric or initiatory (i.e. the realization that spirit and matter are just different states of the “Universal Substance” and that matter is a condensation of the spirit), is what distinguishes thinking based on the right assumptions, thus correct and rigorous, the result of a comprehensive view of existence and a thorough analysis of issues, from common thinking, based on coarse and basically erroneous axioms created by the prevailing tendency to levity (as such it is even when disguised as good-doing or “defense of the rights” of some categories) and materialism, in other words, by an incomplete and superficial conception of existence.
Promoted by the mainstream media by means of easy propaganda slogans, these false axioms are accepted uncritically, facilitated by the rapidity (it would be more correct to call it “frenzy”) of the present world, which atrophies the intellect by bringing the mind to focus on irrelevant issues, thus leading to the grotesque and spasmodic aspects of the present world.
