by Isabella Weber

Over the course of the six-day event, Noir in Festival held conversations featuring over fifteen authors of novels in varying shades of noir. First in Milan, at the Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, and then at the Teatro sociale in Como, writers and readers met up and discussed the novelist’s relationship with crime and the noir genre. What follows is a sampling of these numerous conversations, by way of investigating the connections between Italian noir novelists and their fears (and ours as well).

Kicking off the conversations series, writer Carlo Lucarelli (Intrigo Italiano) and psychiatrist and author Massimo Picozzi (Mente criminale), who have worked together for years, sat down with Noir in Festival director Marina Fabbri to talk about the ethical role of an author writing for an audience about crime, true crime and even the Mafia, playing on the audience’s fears. "Fear can be used as a mere special effect," Lucarelli explained, "in which case the risk is glorifying the criminal model. Yet fear can also become a tool for knowledge, in order to better understand the object of one’s own fear; and this is what we try to achieve. With television audiences I’m very careful about the words I use, since I know I’m in front of viewers who are distracted and in a hurry, but in the novels it’s different. I don’t think the role of a writer is to offer a manual on how to read the novel."

Dealing as he does with criminal cases, as an expert on profiling, Picozzi has an insider’s access to court files and observes that they often don’t succeed in conveying the complexity of the cases and the factors at play: "Sensational crime stories become sheer spectacle, with the defense much more interested in the notoriety their firms will attract than helping  their own clients, not to mention the circus show of the so-called experts called to testify. Fortunately, and much credit goes to Carlo, in writing books I can escape the legal confines of these cases, reconstruct them and add that ethical dimension which is often missing during the trials."

Bernard Minier, responding to questions from Sebastiano Triulzi on the stage in Como, takes on the theme of the ‘double’ in his latest novel (Don't Turn Out the Lights), with the story of a female victim of stalking: "I feel that empathy is more effective than reasoning. For this reason, starting with the second person in my titles, I’m talking to the reader in the most direct way possible, trying to convey my ideas and views of the world through the filter of emotions."

The theme of violence against women returns in the novel by Antonella Lattanzi (Una storia nera), which looks at the mysterious disappearance of a pathologically jealous husband years after separating from his wife. "I like writing about fear, like all strong emotions, but I’d rather attempt to evoke it rather than emphasize it. In fact, I think a character should be left a second before their emotional climax, which allows the reader to fill in the gap with his or her own emotions."

Interviewed by Annarita Briganti as she shared the stage with Lattani, Paola Barbato (Non ti faccio niente) discussed the lopsided relationship between cause and effect, and between intentions and actions. The main character in her latest novel has good intentions, in his own very peculiar way: he kidnaps children for a short three-day period to teach their parents a lesson. It is only when a killer tries to track down those same children he had kidnapped years ago that the kidnapper is forced to come to terms with the unexpected consequences of his own actions. "Fear is perhaps the emotion I know best: I’ve always been afraid of everything," Barbato confessed. "I think this is fundamental, since fear may be the only real instinct we still have. When I write, however, I set my personal life aside. I could never have written about kidnapped children thinking about my own daughters."

And fear was also the common thread runing through the last literary talk at Noir in Festival this year. Simona Vinci (Parla, mia paura) doubled up with Scerbanenco Award finalist Marcello Fois (Del dirsi addio) and chatted with Sebastiano Triulzi about the ways they use fear in their own novels, and what triggers off the emotion inside them as well. What’s Fois’ biggest fear: Idiots. "I believe we’re afraid of what makes us feel powerless, and I feel impotent in the face of idiocy. In my novel, though, I drew on another fear, a phobia that plagued me for years when I became a father: the fear of losing my children. This is probably made the book such an intimate experience for me, so hard to write."

For Simona Vinci, there are certain distinctions to be made when discussing fear: "I know fear very well, having suffered from anxiety attacks for years. To me, real fear is that emotion that provokes a physical reaction: stopping you from breathing, paralyzing you, setting your heartbeat racing, even making you pee in your pants. It’s a powerful emotion and this makes it a dangerous instrument for control, yet it can also be turned into a tool for evalution that teaches us to get to know ourselves better."