MARIO GUARALDI PUBLISHER, ALSO BY AND ABOUT TONDELLI –

The passing of Mario Guaraldi on 2 January last represented a serious loss for Italian publishing and culture.

In recent weeks, many people have highlighted the contribution that Guaraldi, in over half a century of activity, has made to both. First and foremost, in interpreting and defending the important role of independent publishing, perhaps small in size, but courageous, open, innovative, both in terms of themes and authors to deal with, and in terms of technologies for publishing and disseminating ‘books’, and in terms of alliances to be built (between publishers, with libraries, with institutions, with artists and scholars): to broaden both cultural and productive horizons in order to escape the strangulation caused by the distribution system, by the creation of monopolistic groups, by the phagoction of the ‘publishing house’ by the ‘publishing company’. From Publisher to Banker of Knowledge, was the title Guaraldi gave to his communication presented at the Conference ‘Libraries Facing the Challenges of the Future’ held in Lugano in October 2015. But, as mentioned, others more qualified than me have spoken, or probably will in the future, on Guaraldi’s singular and important publishing and cultural adventure as a whole.I am interested in pointing out how and why it intersected with the ‘Pier Vittorio Tondelli’ Documentation Centre of the Municipality of Correggio (CdT) at a certain point.

An encounter that does not appear accidental, if we have the patience to take it a little at a distance.

After the conclusion of the Florentine period (which began in 1971) and a rather troubled intermediate phase, Guaraldi revived his publishing house in 1991 by moving it to his home town of Rimini.

It was at that time – especially from 1996 – that the publishing house made a decisive choice for its history: to embark on the web adventure, putting its entire catalogue on the web and being the first to experiment with Print on Demand techniques, which were then developed and deepened in the following years also in order to make books easily available to a non-mass audience but a dispersed one.

In terms of content, one of the directions this ‘second’ Guaraldi took was the scouting of new literary talents.

One of the happiest ‘discoveries’ was Guido Conti, whose debut – as is well known – had occurred with the short story Notti d’estate, published in the third anthology of Tondelli’s ‘Under 25’ project, published under the title Papergang (Transeuropa, 1990). By Conti Guaraldi he published the first two books. In 1995, Della pianura e del sangue, subtitled Racconti con una cartolina di Pier Vittorio Tondelli (Tondelli’s stories with a postcard); the following year, the novel Sotto la terra il cielo (Under the Earth the Sky). It was the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration, which led to the subsequent publication of other books written or edited by Conti.

This collaboration also extended to the organisation of cultural events, such as the two conferences on new Italian fiction held in Colorno, for which the term ‘Nuovi Selvaggi’ was coined.

Out of those meetings came two important publications, naturally published by Guaraldi.

The first, edited by Fulvio Panzeri, entitled I nuovi selvaggi. Le condizioni del narrare oggi. Antologia dei nuovi narratori italiani (1995); the second, edited by Guido Conti, entitled Dire, scrivere, pubblicare, leggere, valutare. Is the Life of Literature the Life of Publishing? An Anthology of New Italian Narrators (1997)

In 1996 Guaraldi published two more important anthologies. The first, edited by Arnaldo Colasanti, dedicated to La nuova critica letteraria nell’Italia contemporanea; the second, edited by Roberto Galaverni, dedicated to Nuovi poeti italiani contemporanei. Mario Guaraldi also followed and appreciated the literary research site ‘Bomba Carta – Officina di espressioni creative’ founded and led by Antonio Spadaro, whose Lo sguardo presente. Una lettura teologica di ‘Breve film sull’amore’ of Kieslowski was published in 1999

In short, in this second publishing adventure Mario Guaraldi developed a serious and courageous focus on young narrators, poets and critics who were emerging but often not yet established, several of whom would become important names in Italian writing and criticism in the years that followed; demonstrating his good nose as a publisher of culture.

Many of those critics and writers, by the way, had in common their knowledge and appreciation of Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s work. It is not surprising, therefore, that at a certain point this author also entered the Guaraldi catalogue, also thanks to a ‘geographical factor’, through a double anniversary-related publishing release.

A few months apart, in the summer of 2005, Guaraldi published Rimini, il romanzo vent anni dopo. 1985-2005 and Riccione e la Riviera, vent anni dopo. 1985-2005; edited by Fulvio Panzeri. Pier Vittorio Tondelli was the main author of both volumes.

Of the former, of course, since, by concession of RCS Libri, it contained Tondelli’s novel of the same name published in 1985 by Bompiani. However, what made this new edition special – in addition to the editorial elegance of the volume and the beautiful period photographs that contributed to giving it a vintage character – were the approximately sixty pages of documentary accompaniment edited by Fulvio Panzeri, which were very useful for contextualising the production and ‘fortune’ of that novel, which was a best seller, became one of the symbolic representations of Rimini, but also earned Tondelli some critical criticism that, as we know, greatly embittered him.

The second volume focused on the other city, which reasonably allowed one to claim that ‘among the places in Tondelli’s “literary geography”, the Romagna Riviera has its own precise location’, as stated in the cover page. There is no doubt that Riccione, like Rimini, had a special place not only in Tondelli’s imagination, but also in his ‘career’ as a writer. The book – also richly illustrated and in a bound edition – focused on two fundamental moments.

First of all, he was awarded the Special Prize in September 1985 by the Jury of the 38th Riccione Theatre Prize for the play La notte della vittoria (Dinner Party).

A few years later, Tondelli was also involved in the organisation of the documentary exhibition ‘Ricordando fascinosa Riccione. Personaggi, spettacolo, mode e cultura di una capitale balneare’, set up in the summer of 1990 on the occasion of the 40th edition of the Riccione Theatre Prize. In particular, he was entrusted with curating the ‘presenze letterarie’ section. Long research work – for which, I recall, he was also helped by some books from the Correggio Library that he personally came to borrow – led both to the identification and collection of documentary material to be exhibited in the exhibition, and to the drafting of the essay Cabine! Cabine! Immagini letterarie di Riccione e della riviera adriatica (Literary images of Riccione and the Adriatic Riviera), and finally to the selection of a substantial anthology entitled Un mare di cose da scrivere, l’Adriatico; both of which were naturally published in the exhibition catalogue (Grafis Edizioni).

In the book published by Guaraldi from the catalogue, the anthology was taken, while the anthology of Cabine! Cabine! the revised and expanded version for Un weekend postmoderno was used instead. Above all, it featured other articles and interviews by Tondelli, informative and critical texts by Panzeri, and various interesting testimonies.

They were, therefore, books not only by but also about Tondelli; volumes that, thanks to the competent and meticulous curatorship of Fulvio Panzeri (another friend who died prematurely and who is greatly missed) and the editorial wisdom of Mario Guaraldi, added something new and useful to our knowledge of this author.

It was thanks to these antecedents that at a certain point the paths of Guaraldi and CdT came to cross. The occasion was CdT’s need to find a new publisher to whom it could turn to publish the studies that had won the Tondelli Prizes.

The Prizes for theses and critical essays had been instituted since the Centre’s establishment, with the aim of promoting research on Tondelli and his work, especially in the university sphere. The recognition for the winning works consisted substantially in their publication and consequent possibility of dissemination. In order to underline the seriousness and quality of the Awards, a Jury of absolute authority was appointed, chaired by Ezio Raimondi and composed of Alberto Bertoni, Roberto Daolio, Fabrizio Frasnedi, Fulvio Panzeri, Antonio Spadaro and Viller Masoni; supplemented by Elisabetta Mondello on the occasion of what would turn out to be the last edition and ended in 2011.

I had met Mario personally in 2005, on the occasion of the public presentations of the two volumes on Rimini and Riccione mentioned above. The following year a true collaboration began that led to the publication of three volumes.

The first two came out in 2007 and were edited by Fulvio Panzeri and Viller Masoni: Il tramando emiliano nell’opera di Pier Vittorio Tondelli by Luigi Levrini; Geografie tondelliane by Alessia Marcuzzi, Gabriele Malavasi and Giorgio Nisini. The third published in 2013 edited by Viller Masoni: Comico Viaggio Identità Limite. Nuovi studi per Tondelli by Gianni Cimador, Anna Remelli, Eugenio Santangelo and Andrzej Szewczyk.

For me, it was a significant experience on a cultural and also human level. It was also a formative experience, which in some ways continued and enriched a relationship that had grown over the decades based on reading the books he had published.

Viller Masoni