Domenico Starnone (born 15 February 1943[not verified in body]) is an Italian writer, screenwriter, and journalist. He is a prolific book author, having penned at least 22 works since 1987, at least four of which have been translated from Italian into English, including Prima esecuzione (2007, as First Execution, 2009) and Confidenza (2019, as Trust, 2019).[not verified in body] His novel Via Gemito won the Premio Strega in 2001,[not verified in body] and movies by Gabriele Salvatores, Riccardo Milani, and Daniele Luchetti have been based on Starnone books.[not verified in body]
In reports dating to at least 2006 (by Luigi Galella), and more recent scholarly work appearing in 2017 (by Arjuna Tuzzi and Michele A. Cortelazzo of the University of Padova), work focused on textual similarities between authors, Starnone has been proposed to be the Italian author writing under the pen name, Elena Ferrante,[1][non-primary source needed] a role also suggested for his wife, Anita Raja, based on a financial analysis.[2][3][4][5] Ferrante has, via published interviews, dismissed the allegation, stating "My identity, my sex can be found in my writing" and suggesting that the attention to the question was more illustrative of the character of contemporary Italians than anything else.[6] Starnone, for his part, in the press and in his books, strenuously denies his being the author behind Ferrante's works, arguing other obvious contextual reasons for the analysed textual similarities.[1]
Early life and education
Domenico Starnone was born on 15 February 1943 in Saviano, near Naples.[citation needed]
Career
(Learn how and when to remove this message)
Starnone spent a period working as a high school teacher.[when?][citation needed] He also worked for several newspapers and satirical magazines, including L'Unità, Il Manifesto, Tango, and Cuore, usually presenting episodes from his life as a teacher.[when?][citation needed] He has also worked as a screenwriter.[when?][citation needed]
As novelist
Starnone is a prolific book author, having penned at least 22 works since 1987,[citation needed] at least four of which have been translated from Italian into English—Prima esecuzione (2007) as First Execution (2009),[citation needed]Lacci (2014) as Ties (2017),[citation needed]Scherzetto (2016) as Trick (2018),[citation needed] and Confidenza (2019) as Trust or Secrets (2019).[citation needed] His novel Via Gemito won the Premio Strega in 2001.[citation needed] The movies La scuola and The Ties (both by Daniele Luchetti), Auguri Professore (by Riccardo Milani) and Denti (by Gabriele Salvatores) are all based on Starnone books.[citation needed]
Investigations linking Starnone and his family to Elena Ferrante
(Learn how and when to remove this message)
As early as 2006, Luigi Galella had published the view that a computer analysis looking for similarity in textual style supported the conclusion that Domenico Starnone was the author using the pen nameElena Ferrante (author of many works including L'amore molesto and I giorni dell'abbandono[citation needed]).[7][full citation needed] In 2016, Italian journalist Claudio Gatti published the claim that Starnone's wife, Anita Raja, had a history of financial benefits that correlated with the publication and sale of books written by Elena Ferrante, leading Gatti to conclude that it was Raja that was, in fact, Ferrante.[2][3][full citation needed][4][non-primary source needed][5][8] In a collection of interviews published in 2016, the Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey, Ferrante has spoken up to address the speculations, writing with regard to her chosen anonymity and Starnone's being "tired of everyone asking if he's Ferrante", that
he's [Starnone's] right and I feel guilty. But I hold him in great esteem and I'm certain that he understands my motivations. My identity, my sex can be found in my writing. Everything that has sprouted up around that is yet more evidence of the character of Italians in the first years of the twenty-first century."[6]
In 2017, Arjuna Tuzzi and Michele A. Cortelazzo of the University of Padova in Italy published the results of their research comparing the use of the Italian language by Elena Ferrante in the 7 published novels of that author in comparison with a corpus of 150 novels from published in Italian over the preceding 30 years,[1][non-primary source needed] a corpus that included novels by 39 authors:
(i) associated with Campania, as culturally and linguistically representative of Ferrante's Naples,
(ii) suggested by other investigators to be "the true identity" of Ferrante,
(iii) publicly successful in Italy as judged by literary prizes awarded or numbers of copies sold, and/or
(iv) achieving critical respect for their literary value;[1][non-primary source needed]
intentionally omitted from the corpus were Anita Raja's translations (as well as other works both satisfying and failing to satisfy these criteria).[1][non-primary source needed] The attempt by Tuzzi and Cortelazzo to "identify the similarities and differences between [Ferrante's] work and those of other authors" proceeded using methods of principal components analysis to map content between the two sets of works using "word tokens" from each, and then a quantitative linguistics method to establish "intertextual distance" based on the work of Cyril Labbé, to measure similarity between the novels in each set.[1] These scholars conclude this primary research work, stating
Amongst the authors included, Domenico Starnone, who has been previously identified by other investigations as the possible hand behind this pen name, is the author who has written novels most similar to those of Ferrante and which, over time, [have] become progressively more similar... in graphical representations of the measures of similarity, the novels of these two authors are almost inextricably intertwined... Of the thirty-nine authors that have been taken into consideration, Starnone is the only author who demonstrates clear-cut and consistent similarities with Ferrante.[1]
However, in qualifying the results of their research—qualifications only represented here in part—Tuzzi and Cortelazzo note among other unanswered questions that the Ferrante works might be "...the fruit of a clear sit-down project, a meeting of minds—and hands—that consequentially resulted in writing that is unique to drafting and editing methods", noting also that
There is... the possibility that the author who hides behind the pen name Elena Ferrante has never been identified or taken into consideration, either in our research or in that of other scholars. It is also possible their only creative act has been the writing of the novels signed by Elena Ferrante; if he or she is a writer who has never written other novels under their real name, then we would be lacking the textual data necessary for comparison against the work produced by Elena Ferrante. In this case, it would be practically impossible to identify the author.[1]
Starnone, for his part, has "strenuously denied all... hypotheses that implicate him as the... hand behind... Elena Ferrante", doing so in his interactions with the press and in his books, arguing that the two sets of novels (his and Ferrante's) display the alleged similarities because of their common Neopolitan contexts, common periods in history, and similar types of families and their experiences.[1][non-primary source needed] Thus, the alleged associations by Gatti and Tuzzi and Cortelazzo of Ferrante with Raja alone, Starnone alone, or Raja and Starnone together, from these financial and linguistic investigations—as of 2023, both from single primary sources and neither yet substantiated by others—is suggestive, but remains to be further investigated.[1][non-primary source needed][4][5]
Personal life
Starnone is married to literary translator Anita Raja.[citation needed]
Selected bibliography
Ex cattedra (1987)[full citation needed]
Il salto con le aste (1989)[full citation needed]
Segni d'oro (1990)[full citation needed]
Fuori registro (1991)[full citation needed]
Sottobanco (1992)[full citation needed]
Eccesso di zelo (1993)[full citation needed]
Denti (1994)[full citation needed]
Appunti sulla maleducazione di un insegnante volenteroso (1995)[full citation needed]
La retta via (1996)[full citation needed]
Via Gemito (The House on Via Gemito, 2000)[full citation needed]
La collega Passamaglia (2001)[full citation needed]
Alice allo Strega (2002)[full citation needed]
Labilità (2005)[full citation needed]
Ex cattedra e altre storie di scuola (2007)[full citation needed]
Prima esecuzione (2007)[full citation needed]
Spavento (2009)[full citation needed]
Fare scene. Una storia di cinema (2010)[full citation needed]
Autobiografia erotica di Aristide Gambìa (2011)[full citation needed]
Lacci (Ties, 2014)[full citation needed]
Scherzetto (Trick, 2016)[full citation needed]
Le false resurrezioni (2018)[full citation needed]
Confidenza (Trust, 2019)[full citation needed]
English editions
First Execution, translated by Antony Shugaar (2009) ISBN 9781933372662[full citation needed]
Ties, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri (2017) ISBN 9781609453855[full citation needed]
Trick, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri (2018) ISBN 9781609454449[full citation needed]
Trust (also as Secrets), translated by Jhumpa Lahiri (2019) ISBN 9781609457037[full citation needed]
The House on Via Gemito, translated by Oonagh Stransky (2023) ISBN 9781609459239[full citation needed]
Notes
^ abcdefghijTuzzi, Arjuna; Cortelazzo, Michele A. (September 2018) [19 January 2018]. "What is Elena Ferrante? A Comparative Analysis of a Secretive Bestselling Italian Writer" (PDF). Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. 33 (3). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press on behalf of The European Association for Digital Humanities: 685–702, esp. pp. 685-688, 691, 698. doi:10.1093/llc/fqx066. Retrieved 12 June 2023. [Quote, p. 698] Elena Ferrante stands out as having a linguistic profile that is clearly defined and undeniably peculiar. To what this individuality is due, is not clear. Is Elena Ferrante representative of a different genre? Is she the initiator of a new method of writing? Or is her work the fruit of a clear sit-down project, a meeting of minds—and hands—that consequentially resulted in writing that is unique to drafting and editing methods? We do not have an answer to these questions as they require further research—both quantitative and qualitative. / ... / Domenico Starnone, both in one of his books [citing citation 4 therein] and his interactions with the press, has strenuously denied all of the hypotheses that implicate him as the mysterious hand behind the pseudonym of Elena Ferrante. According to what Starnone (2011) wrote in his novel Autobiografia erotica di Aristide Gambìa [Erotic Autobiography of Aristide Gambìa] he and Ferrante are similar because they tell the stories of similar families, set in a context that is the fruit of their common experiences in Naples and of a precise period in history. But in truth, [Tuzzi and Cortelazzo continue] it is rather difficult to imagine that Starnone has not played any role in the planning and/or the drafting of Ferrante's work.
^ abGatti, Claudio (2 October 2016). "Wer ist Elena F.?" [Who is Elena F.?]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ.net) (in German). pp. 41–42. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
^ abGatti, Claudio (4 October 2016) [2 October 2016]. "Die Deutsche Spur" [The German Trail]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAZ.com) (in German). p. 11.[full citation needed]
^ abcGatti, Claudio (2 October 2016). "The Story Behind a Name". NYBooks.com. New York, NY: NYREV, Inc. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
^ abcNote, the three references to works by journalist Gatti are to three presentations of the same investigation, in three periodicals, and therefore constitute a single research observation (and not three independent ones). See the foregoing NYBooks.com citation, which bears the following disclaimer: "[T]he two-part investigation of Elena Ferrante by Claudio Gatti was undertaken on behalf of Mr. Gatti’s Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. After the Il Sole investigation was completed and definitely scheduled to appear on October 2 in Il Sole as well as in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and on the French website Mediapart, an English version of both articles was offered to the NYR Daily for publication on the same day. We regret any confusion about the origins of the Il Sole investigation and publication."
^ abFerrante, Elena (2016). "Never Lower Your Guard". Frantumaglia: A Writer's Journey. Translated by Goldstein, Ann. New York, NY: Europa Editions. pp. §3, Ch. 5. ISBN 9781609453046. OCLC 1035130925.[page needed]
^Galella, Luigi (23 November 2006). "Ferrante è Starnone. Parola di computer". L'Unità.[full citation needed]
^Donadio, Rachael (9 March 2017). "Domenico Starnone's New Novel Is Also a Piece in the Elena Ferrante Puzzle". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 September 2017.
