According to the first information, the first gossip of the agencies beaten, he was seized by an illness while he was on the phone with his wife. Antonio Pennacchi, 71, irregular and impregnable writer died at his home, in Latina, where he was born, today. Unanimous condolences, from culture and literature, from the world including politics, for the author of Mussolini canal and of The fascist Communist. Worker and activist and politician and dissident.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone thus he reflected on his death, on how he would have wanted it: “Sometimes I think in my sleep. And above all without leaving any unfinished business. Leave with peace of mind. Possibly without suffering too much. I’m not afraid of death. I did part of my duty. I consider myself to be in the final stage of my life and if the best part of me is gone, even the worst is behind me. Because I have not always been a good person, as a boy I was not a good boy, I was not a good son or even a good father. I’m a good grandpa now. And I bore witness and honor to my dead, so I was reconciled with my father and my mother ”.
Pennacchi was born in Latina on January 26, 1950. He was the son of settlers in the Pontine area: an Umbrian father and a Venetian mother. He had joined the Italian Social Movement as a young man, he was expelled for an anti-American demonstration against the war in Vietnam. He then joined the Marxist-Leninists of Serving the People and then the PSI, the CGIL, the UIL, the PCI and the CGIL again. He was a worker for almost 30 years at the Fulgorcavi in Latina.
He was expelled by Sergio Cofferati from the CGIL in 1983. During a period of redundancy, in 1994, at the age of 44, he enrolled and graduated in Literature with a thesis on Benedetto Croce. And he published his debut, Mammut, rejected in eight years by 33 different publishers 55 times. Since then he would have published dozens of titles.
Mussolini canal, for Mondadori, he won the Strega Prize in 2010 and was a finalist at the Campiello Prize. In 2011, on the occasion of the municipal elections in Latina, he returned to active politics, supporting Futuro and Libertà and obtaining 1.05% of the preferences. Pennacchi has published for several magazines, such as Limes, Micromega, New Topics, The New French Revue among others. The latest release, again for Mondadori, in 2020 with The way home.
He has become one of the most read and appreciated writers of recent decades in Italy, yet he has never stopped thinking and dreaming about the factory as well. “The life of each of us is studded more by pain than by joys – he always told Rolling Stone – So, the only thing that can save us is a sense of duty. Do not abandon ourselves to pain but struggling to try to get out of it, I for example sublimating it in literature. To do this I also try to play with irony, without taking myself too seriously and above all considering that the tragic destiny of existence does not concern only ourselves, but is the common destiny of the human being.. So the only thing we can do is fully recognize ourselves in others. There is no escape from empathy ”.
