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1972
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domenica, gennaio 28, 2007
Il prestigiatore. Era la combinazione di giornalismo ed arte - secondo celebre definizione di Salman Rushdie - a fare di Ryszard Kapuściński un testimone di eventi unico nel suo genere. Senza nulla togliere agli omaggi che meritatamente sta ricevendo nei giorni successivi alla sua dipartita, vale la pena capire fino a che punto sia lecito mescolare le due categorie:
John Updike worshipped him. Gabriel García Márquez tagged him "the true master of journalism." But there's one fact about the celebrated war correspondent and idol of New York's literary class that didn't get any serious attention this week. It's widely conceded that Kapuściński routinely made up things in his books. Some Kapuściński sympathizers want us to understand his books as allegories about the place he came from—totalitarian Poland. As a reporter for the government news agency, he couldn't write the truth about his country, so he channeled his experiences in Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, El Salvador, Bolivia, Iran, and Chile, among other places, to speak about Polish life under Communism. That's fine with me as long as nobody calls his footwork journalism. The measure of a journalist, especially a foreign correspondent, is to achieve the effect of Kapuściński without scattering the pixie dust of magical realism. Dexter Filkins, John Burns, Anthony Shadid, Carlotta Gall, and other geniuses of foreign correspondence have astonished readers without "allegorizing." To create a special category of international reporting that is true—except where not specified as true—would diminish the true masters' feats. Chiamatela provocazione. |
A Fabio.
A Luisa.   
  Asia e dintorni Normblog |
