I’m interested in understanding the fact that everything in life is turning into a show, draining the very concept of citizenship. I’m also struck by how the individual is more and more unhappily dedicated to becoming a character. And it frightens me that a classical effect of fiction–the suspension of disbelief–is becoming an instrument of political domination in the very heart of democracies. It seems to me that for now Berlusconi embodies, more completely than Reagan or Schwarzenegger, the change taking place in the democratic election of representatives.

Elena Ferrante, from an interview in 2003, appears in Frantumaglia. Prescient, unfortunately, interesting that she says “for now,” as if understanding a bigger, more grotesque character was going to appear on the scene…