Chronicles of the Eighties
(1990)

“Un weekend postmoderno” began as an idea to collect into one large and complete “critical novel”, all of Tondelli’s journalistic, literary and non-fiction works done throughout the Eighties. The writer – after being assisted by Fulvio Panzeri in a classificatory and critical scrutiny of the material at their disposal – had created a project set out in two volumes ; one dedicated to “chronicles of the Eighties” and the other to “stories of the Eighties”.

The first volume, entitled “Un weekend postmoderno”, was published by Bompiani in 1990. The working of the book lead to a complex rewriting of the original texts. In the forward Tondelli emphasised, “The present rewrite has tried to maintain the stylistic tics, the enthusiasm, the rhythm, the naiveté and the descriptive passion of the original by correcting, cutting and occasionally doing a true restoration. In the cases where all this proved to be impossible, and to avoid repetition, everything was tossed out and I went patiently back to my desk. And so, many sections of “Un weekend postmoderno” should be considered as totally new … “.

The writer wanted the volume to be put together with the utmost care and in the most minimum detail. And to include : an apparatus criticus comprised of a table of contents and an index of names ; along with the art on the cover and a series of collages within commissioned from the Spanish artist Juan Gatti, who has worked with Pedro Almodovar, amongst others.

The principal aspiration of the book is the summation of: the complexity of the structure; of the reading ; and the richness of the themes, in what Tondelli had defined as ” … a journey by fragments, reports, interior enlightenment, reflections, shared and direct descriptions, in the more creative and experimental years of the Eighties. It is a journey through provincial Italy, amongst its : theatre groups, amongst its artists, filmmakers, video artists, garage bands, cartoonists, advertising agents and local trendy types. From Pordenone to Lecce, from Udine to Napoli, from Firenze to Bologna, they all had contributed to enriching those same Eighties, apparently vacuous and superficial, with content and experimentation to the point of declaring – no longer just the city, but – the entire Italian province as the moral capital of the decade”.