The acclaimed Italian author Giuseppe Cafiero has created a new literary genre that weaves traditional fiction with real-life biography. In this exclusive interview, he tells Frost Magazine what inspired his unique style of ‘bio-fiction’.
Frost Magazine (FM): Your novel, Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity of Imagination, describes in detail the life and writing of the famous 19th century author. What is the importance and lasting fascination of Flaubert?
Giuseppe Cafiero (GC): Flaubert’s attention to writing. He was very careful in choosing words. He was very scrupulous in the composition of the sentences. He was very much looking forward to the balance of dialogues.
FM: You are clearly a fan of Flaubert’s writing. Which of your novels or stories would you recommend as the best to read first, and why?
GC: An incomplete book: Bouvard and Pecuchet. This is the book that inspired me to write Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity Of Imagination.
FM: Your work is part of the surreal genres and metafictions. Why do you find these genres as satisfying as an author? What can the reader take from these genres that are not offered by other types of writing?
GC: Because it’s suggestive to talk about ambiguity. Because it is very suggestive to speak in a surreal way about the ambiguity of a writer. It’s necessary to engage the reader in different readings by looking at an author under another aspect that intrigues with the surreal
FM: You are the inventor of a literary genre that you have dubbed ‘bio-fiction’. What do you mean by this term and how does it differ from biography or fiction?
GC: My literary genre is neither fiction nor biography. I try to tell a story about the life of a writer in which a surreal element intervenes that modifies reality. This is only an interpretative ambiguity of events that changes what was considered an absolute truth
FM: In your novel, Flaubert presents himself as a rather flawed individual. Do you think that his sexual and mental obsessions were an essential factor in allowing him to write the great works of literature for which he is famous?
GC: Undoubtedly. It is precisely these obsessions that have made Flaubert a particular writer. Without these pathological obsessions Flaubert would have been perhaps an insignificant writer
FM: Which authors have had more influence on your writing and why?
GC: My writing was influenced very much by Jorge Luis Borges, because if Borges has viewed the world and influenced his writings through the use of duplicity, I have believed that ambiguity would be deciphering in the world in a different but also very suggestive way
FM: How do you decide which historical figures to give biofocus treatment? Are there any character traits you are looking for that make an ideal subject?
GC: There are some characters (writers, painters, musicians) that interest me a lot. Certainly these characters have had adventures or have had friends or loves that lend themselves very well to the game of ambiguity
FM: What other authors do you think to give to the “bio-fiction” treatment in the future and why?
GC: The Portuguese poet Mario de Sa Carneiro for the ambiguity of his suicide. Virginia Woolf for the ambiguity of her lesbian love. James Joyce for the ambiguity of the epiphanies. Edgar Allan Poe for the ambiguity of his death for alcoholism.
FM: Your novels address the main theme of “ambiguity”. Why does this concept fascinate you and how does this idea link to what we can hope to understand as “truth” from literature and history?
GC: The theme of ambiguity fascinates me because it’s possible to look at the life and works of an artist in a different way through a keyhole that deforms things just because this keyhole is ambiguity. It is an ambiguity that can show another truth.
Gustave Flaubert: The Ambiguity Of Imagination and Mário De Sá-Carneiro: The Ambiguity Of A Suicide, both by Giuseppe Cafiero, are out now.
