There is a lot to do. For us all

“The crisis has already played a positive role insofar as it revealed all the contradictions stemming from an uncontrolled capitalism, that had been hidden over decades and are now to be faced. This is a positive aspect indeed.”

Telos: Author, novelist, scriptwriter, man of letters and culture. Is it still possible today, to talk about political commitment and role of the intellectual?

Andrea Camilleri: In my very personal opinion, social commitment is innate to the function of the intellectual, but it is an entirely different kind of commitment from that of the politician. It would be better for everyone to stick to their own job. I would say that today more than ever commitment to cohesion should be a duty of all citizens, Italians as well as Europeans, no matter what their individual activities are.  

Lately, a joke has circulated, not only in Italy: the best thing about 2011 is that maybe it was better than 2012. Yet, in 2011 protest movements of the younger generation, spreading from the Arab spring to the Spanish Indignados or to Occupy Wall Street, called into question political and economic structures that seemed undisputable during the period of growth and prosperity. Can this crisis be an opportunity to give a tangible perspective to the requests for a fairer order?

It depends on how we come out of the crisis, whether overcome or strengthened. My wish is that this crisis, which is world-wide one and everywhere is calling into question the ways national and international economies were managed until now, may lead to a new and different vision of society in every single country and globally. The crisis has already played a positive role insofar as it revealed all the contradictions stemming from an uncontrolled capitalism, that had been hidden over decades and are now to be faced. This is a positive aspect indeed.  

Anniversaries, celebrations=boring rhetoric? Still, memory and remembrance force us to ask questions to ourselves. In 2011, 150 years after the proclamation of the Unification of Italy we were left wondering if it still means anything to be Italian. Did you give yourself an answer?

I don’t have any answer because I have always considered myself as an Italian born in Sicily and this has always had a great meaning, at least for me, and still does. I hope that today young people consider themselves as Europeans born in Italy. However, the 150th Anniversary of the Unification meant so much to me. Not by chance almost all of my historical novels are placed exactly in the time of the Unification of Italy, a specific moment in which we tried to shape a national community, sometimes through the right measures, sometimes through the wrong ones.

Your writings show your contempt for all forms of bureaucracy, an absurd Moloch who oppresses the citizen. Yet, not only the structure of the modern State but also the guarantees for the citizens’ rights are based on the robustness of the Public Administration. Is there any possibility that bureaucracy might not always be a synonym with inefficiency?

There must be a reason why from Gogol’ to Courteline, the world literature has satirized bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is synonym with quibble, slowness and above all citizen constriction. That is the way I described it in my novels, albeit in an ironic form, since in my opinion it corresponds to a precise undeniable truth. Coming back to Italy, it is not a coincidence that two Minsters from two different Governments suppressed thousands and thousands Regulations without actually affecting the bureaucratic machinery at all. Of course I hope that a real reform of bureaucracy may lead to a more efficient, quick and transparent management of the Public Administration.