Italy (Einaudi) – Momenti di trascurabile infelicità
Francesco Piccolo
Momenti di trascurabile infelicità (Moments of Negligible Unhappiness)
Einaudi, 2015, 144 pages

Number One Bestseller

From this book the movie by Daniele Luchetti Momenti di trascurabile felicità, scripted by Francesco Piccolo.

“It’s like if you adopt a microscope for the visible reality: what is negligible, even though you don’t realize it, produces effects that are anything but negligible.” Raffaele La Capria

“Francesco Piccolo has a magic touch, he makes you feel that life is a serious thing, always, especially when things are funny.” Tiziano Scarpa

It may not make sense, but laughing at moments of sadness can change your day. Knowing how to deal with mishaps, accidents, excruciating momentary pain, can often turn out to be absolutely exhilarating. Provided that they are negligible and lived cheerfully, they can be an integral part of the joy of living. And who better to tell about it than Francesco Piccolo, who takes the moments that make up a life and composes them into a wickedly funny portable encyclopedia?

After the great success of Moments of Negligible Happiness Francesco Piccolo is back to his light-hearted exploration of the moments that make up a life, but this time he is taking them on from the wrong side. He sifts through his days to examine how each mishap, even the most annoying, hides something priceless: a dazzling sparkle of fun and vitality. Whether it’s sharing an umbrella with someone, offering it up kindly only to have both of you wind up soaking wet; or admitting you don’t remember anything of what you learned in school; or acknowledging that children’s performances are tedious, and that we do not love our children in the same way, simply because they are each different. Then there is the moral obligation to take a shower as soon as you get to the house of a friend hosting you, whether you felt like it or not – basically just to reassure him or her that you wash regularly. Or those overly polite people who hold the door open for you, forcing you to hurry up.
Every day each of us experiences thousands of forms of negligible (though not insignificant) unhappiness. But the doubt often arises that it might be “like a game of pick-up sticks: if I take away the thing I like least from the person I love, what I like best might also disappear”.

“When someone tells me that I could have dressed up for the occasion. But I already had dressed up.”

“I would have liked to be born Prince Charles. I would have liked to be the heir to the throne for my entire life, only heir to the throne. I would have liked to have some sentimental problems and then do nothing, all my life, just waiting for something that would surely never come.”

“The fact of not knowing if the refrigerator light really goes off when you shut the door.”

 

 

Francesco Piccolo

Francesco Piccolo - © Andrea De Meo

Francesco Piccolo is a writer and screenwriter. His latest books are: Il desiderio di essere come tutti (Strega Prize 2014), L’animale che mi porto dentro (2018), the Negligible Moments trilogy and La bella confusione (2023). He has signed screenplays for Nanni Moretti, Silvio Soldini, Paolo Virzì, Francesca Archibugi, Daniele Luchetti, and Marco Bellocchio, among others. He scripted the TV series My Brilliant Friend. He collaborates with la Repubblica.

 

 

 

“It’s like if you adopt a microscope for the visible reality: what is negligible, even though you don’t realize it, produces effects that are anything but negligible.”
Raffaele La Capria

“Francesco Piccolo has a magic touch, he makes you feel that life is a serious thing, always, especially when things are funny.”
Tiziano Scarpa

Foreign rights sold in:
Albania: Fjala
Spain and Latin America: Anagrama
Spain (Catalan): Univers

Italian and international editions:

Foreign publishers of Francesco Piccolo works
Albania: Fjala
Bulgaria: Ciela
Croatia: Hena
Egypt: Beba Editions
France: Denoël
Germany: Insel
The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek
Russia: Corpus
Serbia: Laguna
Spain: Anagrama
Spain (Catalan): Univers

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