Franco Lucentini

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Franco Lucentini
Born December 24, 1920(1920-12-24)
Rome, Italy
Died August 5, 2002 (aged 81)
Turin, Italy
Pen name F&L (together with Carlo Fruttero), Sydney Ward, P. Kettridge
Occupation novelist, journalist, translator, editor
Nationality Italian
Writing period 1951—2002
Genres mainstream fiction, crime fiction

Franco Lucentini (December 24, 1920 - August 5, 2002) was an Italian writer, journalist, translator and editor of anthologies.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Rome on 24 December 1920 to Emma Marzi and Venanzio Lucentini, a miller from Marche and later the owner of a bakery in Rome.

While studying Philosophy at the University of Rome, Lucentini was one of the organizers of a practical joke against the fascist regime: on 5 May 1941 he and a friend distributed among other students paper streamers. When unrolled during a public meeting, they revealed writings such as "Down with the war!", "Down with Hitler!" and "Long live freedom!". Lucentini was arrested and spent two months in prison.

Lucentini graduated in February 1943. Called to arms in 1943, he was refused the admission to the training to become an officer. After the Armistice, the Allied armed forces put to use his writing skills as a junior editor for the "United Nations News" press agency in Naples.

After the war, Lucentini worked in Rome for ANSA news agency; later, associated with ONA news agency, he went to Prague and Vienna. The atmosphere of postwar Vienna gave him the inspiration for the novella I compagni sconosciuti. After a brief time again in Rome, in 1949 he left for Paris where he was employed in several jobs (deliveryman, teacher, masseur).

While in Paris, he first met the two most important people in his life: Simone Benne Darses, 12 years older than him, who was to become his lifetime wife; and, in 1952, Carlo Fruttero, with whom a life-long literary collaboration began in 1957, when Lucentini moved to Turin, where both of them worked for Einaudi publishing house.

As a very successful and appreciated team, Fruttero & Lucentini wrote books and worked in publishing, directing book series and magazines (Il Mago, Urania), and editing fiction anthologies, for Einaudi publishing house and, since 1961, for Mondadori. In 1972 Lucentini and Fruttero began writing for Turin-based newspaper La Stampa (then directed by Alberto Ronchey), writing the column "L'Agenda di F. & L.", commenting with humour and irony on current facts; they also wrote for L'Espresso and Epoca.

Their first book was the poetry collection L'idraulico non verrà, in 1971. But the first largely successful work was the crime novel La donna della domenica (1972), set in Turin. The novel was made into the same title film by Luigi Comencini; the next novel, A che punto è la notte (1979), shared the same protagonist, il commissario Santamaria. In the following decades they wrote together several novels and non-fiction books, till "F&L" became a known and appreciated trademark.

In 2000 Lucentini was awarded a special Campiello award for his life's work.

Afflicted by a lung cancer, Lucentini took his life on 5 August 2002, throwing himself down the stairs of his flat's building in piazza Vittorio Veneto, 1, in Turin. His friend and co-author Carlo Fruttero observed: "He had no pills, it was difficult to get into the river, and he would have been rescued anyway, the train was too far. Before dying he would have thought, what's all the buzz about death?, let's get it over with".[1]

[edit] Trivia

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Lucentini sometimes used the pseudonyms Sydney Ward and P. Kettridge; he used the first one mostly to byline short stories of his own in anthologies of science-fiction or war stories by foreign authors.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Alone

  • La porta - Short story, written in 1947 and first published in the first issue (March/April 1953) of the literary magazine "Nuovi Argomenti" (lit., "The door")
  • I compagni sconosciuti, Einaudi, 1951 (republished in 2006) - The gloomy tale of Franco, an Italian wandering in post-war Vienna (lit., "The unknown mates")
  • Notizie degli scavi, Feltrinelli, 1964 (republished by Einaudi in 2001) - A novella about "Professor", the feeble-minded factotum of a brothel in Rome (lit., "News of the excavations")

[edit] With Carlo Fruttero

  • Il secondo libro della fantascienza, Einaudi, 1961 - The first of several successful anthologies of science fiction short stories edited by F&L
  • L'idraulico non verrà, Mario Spagnol, 1971 (republished by Nuovo Melangolo in 1993) - Poetry collection (literally, "The plumber will not come")
  • La donna della domenica, Mondadori, 1972 (translated into English by William Weaver as The Sunday Woman in 1973) - The first and most famous novel by F&L, and one of the first examples of Italian crime novels
  • L'Italia sotto il tallone di F&L, Mondadori, 1974 - A humorous political fantasy in which Fruttero & Lucentini become dictators of Italy with the help of Muammar al-Gaddafi; the novel was inspired by the real, very harsh reaction of the embassy of Libya to a satyrical article by F&L in La Stampa, very critical of Gaddafi (lit., "Italy under F[ruttero] & L[ucentini]'s heel")
  • Il significato dell'esistenza, 1974 (republished by Tea in 1997) - (lit., "The meaning of existence")
  • A che punto è la notte, Mondadori, 1979 - Crime novel (lit., "What of the night", as in the Bible book of Isaiah, 22:11)
  • La cosa in sé, Einaudi, 1982 - Play "in two acts and a licence" about a man who relises that solipsism is real and all the universe is created by his mind (lit., "The thing in itself", as in the philosophical term)
  • Il Palio delle contrade morte, Mondadori, 1983 - (lit., "The Palio of the dead quarters")
  • Ti trovo un po' pallida, 1983 - A ghost story set in sunny Tuscany, originally appeared in the L'Espresso magazine in 1979; it was actually written by Fruttero alone, as explained in the afterword to 2007 volume edition (lit., "You look quite pale")
  • La prevalenza del cretino, Mondadori, 1985 - A collection of "L'Agenda di F. & L." columns form the newspaper La Stampa, about all forms of stupidity (lit., "The supremacy of the stupid")
  • La verità sul caso D, Einaudi, 1989 (translated into English by Gregory Dowling as The D. Case: Or The Truth About The Mystery Of Edwin Drood) - A completion and elaboration on Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood (lit., "The truth on the D case")
  • L'amante senza fissa dimora, Mondadori, 1990 - A successful Italian woman meets a mysterious man in romantic Venice: an apparently standard love story with a twist (lit., "The lover of no fixed abode")
  • Storie americane di guerra, Einaudi, 1991 - Anthology of "American war stories"
  • Enigma in luogo di mare, Mondadori, 1991 - Crime novel set in a seaside community in Tuscany (lit., "Riddle in a sea town")
  • Il ritorno del cretino, Mondadori, 1992 - More columns from "La Stampa" (lit., "The comeback of the stupid")
  • Breve storia delle vacanze, Mondadori, 1994 - (lit., "Short history of vacations")
  • La morte di Cicerone, Nuovo Melangolo, 1995 - (lit., "Cicero's death")
  • Il nuovo libro dei nomi di battesimo, Mondadori, 1998 - A non-fiction handbook about how to choose a name for a son, with amusing informations and trivia on names' meaning and use
  • Il cretino in sintesi, Mondadori, 2002 - Still more columns from "La Stampa" (lit., "The stupid in synthesis")
  • Viaggio di nozze al Louvre, Allemandi, 2002 - (lit., "Honeymoon at Louvre")
  • I nottambuli, Avagliano, 2002 - (lit., "The nightwalkers")
  • I ferri del mestiere, Einaudi, 2003 - A collection of articles and short stories edited by Domenico Scarpa (lit., "The tools of the trade")

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ RaiNews24 - Lucentini. L'ultimo saluto di Torino allo scrittore scomparso. Fruttero: se ne va un bricoleur

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Lucentini, Franco
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Italian writer
DATE OF BIRTH 24 December 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome
DATE OF DEATH 5 August 2002
PLACE OF DEATH Turin