Muristek
The closest Ferrante has come to an articulation of why and how she writes
For 30 years, the Italian novelist Elena Ferrante has been publishing pseudonymously. “I believe that books, once they are written, have no need of their authors,” she wrote to her publisher in 1991. “If they have something to say, they will sooner or later find readers; if not, they won’t.”
Initially, this seemed to mean that Ferrante would neither appear publicly nor comment on her work. Too bad the books were so good, and – in the case of the Neapolitan quartet, the passionate, class-conscious saga of Lila and Lenù’s lifelong friendship – phenomenally successful. In recent years, Ferrante has allowed herself to be drawn out, offering words beyond her novels. She’s given countless interviews, many of which were collected in Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey. She’s written a weekend column for this newspaper, covering such topics as house plants and children who lie for no reason. And now she has published In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, developing ideas scattered throughout her previous writings. Together, these four essays are the closest Ferrante has come to an articulation of her literary methodology.
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