Elena Ferrante, reclusive Italian novelist, will soon have to trudge through the same morass of noise and nonsense as the rest of us writers.
The Guardian has announced that the pseudonymous Ferrante, cult-favorite author of the dazzling, feverish Neapolitan novels, will write a weekly column for its newly redesigned weekend magazine, which comes out Jan. 20. The column will be translated by Ann Goldstein, Ferrante’s longtime English translator.
“Ferrante will share her thoughts on a wide range of topics, including childhood, ageing, gender and, in her debut article, first love,” says the Guardian.
The author is not known for her light musings on parenting and social faux pas. Her bestselling quartet is about two women who grow up in a violent post-war Naples, grappling with love, social upheaval, and their own tortuous relationship. The reader expects a blow to the head behind every turn of the page.
Ferrante has largely kept out of the public eye and away from public debate, despite attempt after attempt to drag her out. Now she’ll be on display on a weekly basis, and she’ll have to contend with the content machine that is English-language news, with its constant cycle of comments and rebuttals.
The Guardian declined to reveal further specifics of Ferrante’s planned essays, so we wrote some headlines that we think will help her stand out in the current media landscape, based on actual lines from her novels:
On first love:
On childhood:
On gender:
On aging:
