ANASTASIO ATTANASIO ALIAS RICKY IN “TELL ME A STORY!” by F.P.Barbieri

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(NOTE to inverarity68 and anyone else who is interested: while the first story was only a sort of ouverture, here the world-building begins in earnest. Concrit welcome.)

Comments

[inverarity]

I like what you are doing with the Italian wizarding world. Obviously there are cultural references that non-Italians won't get, but it's clear that you are drawing on authentic knowledge of Italy's diverse history and regions, so that makes it cool, and very different from the British Ministry.

I'm a little skeptical, though, about one rural village being able to smack down an international delegation like that, and then humble their Ministries in their home countries. Unless it's going to be sort of an in-joke in your world that these Pancratian weather wizards are among the most powerful wizards in the world, but no one realizes it because all they do is conjure rain for the local farmers, it seemed a little too trite. Arrogant foreigners show up, blustering and threatening, and get sent home with their tails between their legs -- it's a nice story, but makes the entire international wizarding world seem pretty inept, and the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy a joke. (Once the delegation gets home, would the rest of the international wizarding community really leave the Pancratians alone after that? Or would they, realizing that they're not just dealing with some peasant hedge-wizards, come back fully prepared to enforce the Statute?) I cannot help thinking that you're making some commentary on the UN or the EU here, and if that's the case, it's a bit heavy-handed. Speaking of which, are only European Ministries involved in the International Statute of Secrecy? And is Italy really the only place in the world where they have to deal with a bunch of local independent wizarding communities and no strong central authority?

With regard to the narrative: I understand you're writing these as small introductory vignettes, but if your series is going to be about Ricky, then I think there should be more Ricky stories, with the exposition about the Italian wizarding world being inserted gradually as we get to know the character. This story wasn't about Ricky at all; Ricky asking for a bedtime story was just a pretext to tell about the Pancratian weather wizards. I do like world-building, but without characters who make it meaningful, there's no reason to care about the world they inhabit. I don't think many people would read stories about my American wizarding world if they hadn't already become engaged with the character of Alexandra. The story needs to sell us on the world, rather than the world selling us on the story, if you see what I mean. This story was a lot of exposition about details of the Italian wizarding world that we, as of yet, have no reason to care about.

The final section, in particular, was rather boring. Yes, it gave us more insight into the Italian Ministry, and the Minister's standing, but it was pure exposition; unless we care about the characters (Ricky and his father), why do we care that the Italian Ministry is weak, or what political factors made the Pancratians' autonomy possible?

Lastly, there is a moralizing tone in much of your writing that almost makes one imagine the author waggling his finger at the reader to make sure we Get The Message. It was there in Ricky Attanasio and the King of Cats, with Ricky being hit over the head with the moral lesson (yes, a six-year-old might need to be hit over the head with the lesson, but the reader doesn't), followed by the speech about how he should hate injustice and cruelty (which, frankly, sounded a bit odd coming from a cat), and it's here with the Pancration mayor lecturing the foreigners (who practically have "Arrogant cultural imperialist EU bureacrats" stamped on their foreheads) about helping their neighbors, intermarrying, ancient traditions, Muggle-abusers, etc. I think you could make the point without such long-winded speeches coming from the character who is voicing whatever moral you're trying to impart.

This may take a while...

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First and foremost, thanks for the attentive and thorough review. I said it before and I'll say it again: the attention of an intelligent reader is a great compliment to any writer. The attention of an intelligent reader who also happens to be a great writer, now -!

Right, then. The premise you find dubious - that the little rural community of Capo Pancrazio ranks among the mightiest wizards in the world - is exactly what I intended. The very name (pan-kration, "all-force") ought to be a warning. It is one example of the immense difficulty that the Italian Ministry has faced since 1860, and to which, before Alberico Attanasio, it had more or less yielded. The Italian wizarding communities are not only numerous and scattered; a few of them are themselves gigantically powerful. (This does not represent any allegory or symbol about real-life Italy; it is a piece of "secondary creation" in the Tolkien sense, producing a world with its own internal consistency. If there was an Italy with the features I have thought up, then a few of its communities would be very powerful indeed.) As for the ineptitude and weakness of the international wizarding community - as my mayor points out, the fact that "only" 39 ministries had subscribed to the action shows that even outside Capo Pancrazio it had caused considerable disagreement. The show of numbers was intended to disguise the fact that some "big players" had not wanted in. And the Ministries were not at their best - just at the end of the Grindelwald bloodletting, which must have bled many of them white. The whole expedition was the result of collective anger and hysteria in the aftermath of the Grindelwald war - not a good foundation.

I also think that the whole moral status of the issue is by no means as clear as you seem to think I made it. I am not "trying to impart" whatever the Mayor wants, any more than you are trying to impart what Dean Grimm or Abraham Thorn say. Both of them can make a good case for their views; and so can the Mayor of Capo Pancrazio. Sure, the Mayor delivers a fine extempore speech - you would expect a Mayor to be able to. Sure, he makes a good case. But if you look at Alberico's position, what he is saying is that the Pancratians are doing what they please because they can. Alberico is very much in two minds - happy that the foreigners have been humiliated, but not that the weakness of national law in Italy has been shown up. He is working in the opposite direction. If the Mayor is right, he is wrong. If the Mayor is wrong, he is right. At least, there are two ways of looking at the matter. And by the same token, the story is not so much about the weather wizards as about the weak and unstable position of the Ministry and of Ricky's own father. It is with his hopeless sense of struggle and exhaustion that it opens and closes.

One thing. I am far from being opposed to the EU. Practically every Italian is pro-European to the bone, even those of us who have problems with individual European policies or decisions. I do however resent the vanity and outright racism of certain north European countries, and I have good reason to. As it happens, my brother is the head of a national NGO who regularly deals with European institutions at the highest levels, and I have heard horror stories about the arrogance and close-mindedness of a number of small countries that regard themselves as the vanguard of mankind. More I do not want to say, but my depiction of certain groups is based on experience.

continued

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You have a point that the ending is both dry and insufficiently concerned with the nominal protagonist. I will try to do better in stories to come, but I am pretty much making it up as I go along. My problem is that I am trying to do something that has no real model. While I have drawn the basic categories from JKR's mythology, I could not, as you did, place a central institution such as a school at the centre, with the certainty that the adult leadership - whether Dumbledore or Diana Grimm, Raspire or Scrimgeour - knew most of the answers. The whole series of stories is a struggle towards a half-seen, half-unknown centre; either that centre does not exist and must be built, or if it does (I cannot say more) it must be found. So the whole element of world-building can neither be delegated to a Hermione character reading one or more versions of Hogwarts: A History nor be forced bit by bit out of a more or less unwilling set of adults. The adults are nearly as blind as Ricky. Even his father, the Minister, is not quite sure exactly how many wizarding tribes actually exist in Italy, for there are cave-dwelling and subterranean groups who speak unknown languages that never have been written down, and who have not come out into the sun since before Rome was founded; and there are other groups who hide in forests and mountain, at war with the whole world, of whom it is not always clear whether they are men or ogres (orchi). At the same time, the whole element of child's eye narrative is something I have never done before. I know in theory what I want, but in practice getting there is proving infernally difficult. I say this not to excuse any poor writing that may be found in the closing paragraphs, but to explain its presence.