Il libro del Nulla
The Book of Nothing. Serious and semi-serious writings on the edge of existence
Because as long as things happen inside me, all is well: the ship runs straight, even through the storms… but a ship, unfortunately, is not only navigation, it is also and above all cargo… so, to unload and get a little life in a tavern or wherever, and to give this rickety sailing ship the very legitimacy of its need to exist, well… One has to come into port.
The book
Il libro del Nulla gathers fifty short prose pieces: some a page long, some a few lines, some complete short stories. It holds dialogue and aphorism, fable and confession together with a single posture, that of someone looking at existence from the edge, half in and half out, refusing to decide which side he belongs to.
It opens with Death paying a visit to a man dozing in the afternoon and arguing with him about permanent contracts and free will. It goes on to a world in which Time, for sport, removes one minute from every week, and people, rather than notice, throw away their watches. There is a bookseller who explains to a customer why the book she bought is no longer the same on second reading, a man who finds Maigret's pipe, an abandoned prison on an island that sends back reflections where there is no sun, a transparent man and a man made of pencil.
Between the stories sit the splinters: Riflessioni, Velocità, Mattino, Gli artisti, pages where the author speaks without a mask about his morning uselessness, about losing the thread of everything, about needing a constant supply of momentum so as not to fall prey to the gravitational fields of every passing asteroid. This is the register the author calls philosophical grotesque: comic and dark in the same paragraph, with metaphysics coming in through the service door of domestic life.
The declared references are Borges, Kafka, Cortázar and Perec, Hamsun, Céline; the tone is entirely Roman and entirely his own, an irony that does not console but keeps you company. The book is published in Italian only; the quotations below are English renderings, with page numbers from the 2021 Italian edition.
Quotations
Translated from the Italian. Page numbers refer to the 2021 edition.
We are born dogs, we become cats, we die hyenas.
And then… then there are the artists, who cannot find the ground when they walk.
That is a book's trade: to take away the sadness of whoever reads it.
You have to knock to enter people's lives, or break the glass. And it keeps on raining.
We are fireworks. Some can be seen clearly in the night, even from miles away they can be pointed out to children… others go off in broad daylight, and nobody even notices their light.
I lose the thread of everything… or I race like a spaceship that has to reach Mars by dinnertime or it's all over… I need a constant and abundant supply of momentum, otherwise I fall prey to the gravitational fields of every asteroid, even the smallest and most insignificant.
I stay there stunned, observing my uselessness, which welcomed me as usual, greedy, acid and soft, the moment I lifted my head from the pillow this morning and realised the world had not stopped overnight.
Life is a journey you complete because you lack the courage to jump off while it's moving, or because you believe you are going somewhere nice, or out of laziness, or simply out of the habit of being on the train, or perhaps because you don't want to leave your travelling companions alone.
Hesitation to finish even a simple chapter… because you are not an artist but a murderer, killing the better possibilities that surely exist in the white space left on the page.
Every novel I begin with "I" is not a deception, because it is an "I" that lives inside me. Events that never happened, actions never taken. But which I would take, if those events were to happen.
Nobody noticed there was less time at first, and when they did notice… Nothing, nothing changed. They had got used to it.
Perhaps because, unconsciously, we are used to being who others told us we are, and cannot break free? Well then, it means we let others block us, fence us in and shape us with their very words…
Romanticism: an Italian garden with an attentive, elderly, forever inexperienced keeper. Useless, the plants, in their extreme, painful, vigorous and fragile beauty and their reckless strength. But land costs money, and is always more productive than a garden where nobody pays for a ticket.
The difference between you and me is that I have always known that flags, sex and the desk with the toy soldiers on it are all bullshit. Sooner or later I will find something to live for.
Contents
Fifty pieces, in the original Italian order.
- La morte mi fa visita
- Il nano
- Lo smartworking
- La Divina Tolleranza
- L'amore di un cane
- L'incidente
- La canzone della formica
- Che cosa ho fatto…
- Ho vinto
- Il risveglio
- Il Palazzo delle Nebbie
- Velocità
- Il terrazzo
- La ballata del marinaio cieco
- Le calze
- Il fondo
- Altrove
- Il becchino
- L'intervista
- L'epidemia
- Girotondo
- Io
- Il giocatore
- L'Evento
- Riflessioni
- L'orologiaio
- Gli artisti
- Senza titolo
- L'elicottero
- L'uomo che veniva da Ovest
- La scala dell'innocenza
- Il biglietto
- Di nuovo circa la morte
- L'uomo trasparente
- Invecchiare
- È tutto già
- Il giudizio
- La teoria dell'amante
- L'autosalone
- Cortesie
- L'abitudine
- Vivere
- L'uomo matita
- Il poeta
- La musica
- Romanticismo
- Il libro
- Lo scherzo
- L'uomo che ritrovò la pipa di Maigret
- Mattino
- Golconda
- Il riflesso
Where to read it. In Italian on Amazon (Kindle and paperback) · Goodreads · Apple Books. Italian page: Il libro del Nulla.
How to cite
The author
Lucio Freni is an independent Italian writer based in Rome. His books span noir, dystopian satire, philosophical grotesque and epistolary fiction, and include Benzina, Cronache dal Sistema, Il libro del Nulla, Non torna mai nessuno da quaggiù and È tutta colpa di Dio. All titles are published in Italian. Author record on Wikidata.