The spirit of Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' possesses Paolo Cognetti

BarcelonaAfter the international success of The Eight Mountains (Navona, 2018), Paolo Cognetti (Milan, 1978) explains that he felt a bit like Bruce Springsteen when he returned from the tour of The river (1980). "He was 33 years old and had just become a rock star. Then he locked himself in the house, started watching horror movies and reading stories about violence and composed Nebraska (1982)", explains Cognetti. Reflecting on the American singer, the writer also isolated himself to get away from the worldwide fame achieved with the novel and began to write. In three months he had ready At the bottom of the valley (La Campana / Random House Literature), recently published with a translation by Helena Aguilà and which Cognetti considers his Nebraska"The spirit of the album took hold of me, and the story came very easily. I think the reader will notice this when they read it," says the Italian author.

The spark of the novel is, in fact, a song from Springsteen's album, Highway patrolman. Cognetti has taken possession of the two brothers mentioned in the subject and brought them to his land: both grew up on the banks of the Sesia River; one is a forest ranger and the other is a criminal. "The first decided to stay, got married, and is now expecting a daughter. The second left town, ended up in prison, and when he got out, he went to work as a lumberjack in Canada and became a vagrant," explains the writer. The brothers have been estranged for seven years, but their father's death brings them back together, and this is where the book begins. "It's a meeting full of possibilities," says Cognetti.

Jack London and Flannery O'Connor

Unlike The Eight Mountains, which took place in the Italian Alps, the writer now sets the novel on a plain. "I decided to go down the mountain towards the city, but I stayed in this valley, which is a land in between, a great depression and a kind of urban periphery with highways, shopping malls and factories. It's one of those uninteresting places we drive through when going to a tourist spot and that we pretend doesn't exist." In this non-place, Cognetti explores the humanity of characters trapped in dark and unrewarding lives, inspired by great masters of American literature such as Jack London, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway.

The siblings who are the protagonists of the novel have practically opposite ways of seeing life, but both suffer from the same illness: alcoholism. "In the places I know, it's normal to drink from the moment you wake up. If you order a drink at nine in the morning, no one gives you the slightest look. I wanted to reflect how alcohol can be some people's drug of choice and how its consumption is normalized," Cognetti emphasizes. Although he insists he doesn't write "with the intention of protesting," the novel also captures the difficult relationship between humanity and nature, especially in the West. "Coexistence between people and nature is increasingly difficult. From my point of view, we should follow the American model: having large parks and protected wilderness areas, where people can barely enter," the writer reflects.