John Turturro is not a fan of Elena Ferrante’s ‘unmasking’
The “unmasking” of Italian author Elena Ferrante doesn’t sit well with John Turturro.
Speaking on a panel for “Ferrante Night Fever!” at Community Bookstore in Brooklyn on Thursday night, “The Night Of” star told a tightly squeezed audience he found the alleged unveiling of the best-selling author a “violation.”
“Not only is it a violation,” the 59-year-old actor said. “But sometimes people need that distance in order to be creative. They need to have that mask which sort of says, ‘That’s the best way I can function.’ You’re invading something sacred to that particular person.”
Turturro is referring to journalist Claudio Gatti, who penned a piece for the New York Review of Books in which he argued that German translator Anita Raja wrote “My Brilliant Friend” under a pseudonym.
Ferrante’s “Neapolitan Novels” tetralogy are ever popular in the literary world, where her success has hit the mainstream, including being named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2016.
Turturro explained that he found Ferrante’s books to be “a real education for a man.”
“If you’re interested, or you don’t know the interior life of what women have to go through,” he told the audience. “Or you’ve imagined seeing these things but you were never able to ever articulate them demonstrated before your eyes. It’s really a great thing to enter into that world and it’s very civilizing in a great way.”
Panelists included the New Yorker’s Judith Thurman and Giancarlo Lombardi, and the moderator was author Darcey Steinke.