Interview on Manituana from Spanish daily paper Publico

Publico, Madrid, May 17th, 2009
[...] Why write a trilogy on the American Revolution? Wasn't one book enough?

Originally, in fact, it was one book with three sub-plots, but then the sub-plots got bigger and bigger, they became more and more complex, and the choice was between writing a 2000-pages book or three 600-pages books! We call it "the Atlantic Triptych", it is a saga on the relationships between Europe and the US. It will take several years to finish it, also because we won't write the 3 books one after the other. We'll write other books in between.
Why write on the American Revolution instead of other historical events?

Because that is the moment when the US were born, separating from Europe. It is the point of origins of the troubled, love-hate relationship we all have with our North-American "cousins".

In all your historical novels there's a reflection on the present. What aspects of the present a novel like Manituana may cast light upon?

Manituana was written during George W. Bush's so-called "War on terror", and it absorbed that kind of atmosphere: the Bush-Blair-Aznar summit in the Azores, the war on Iraq, the tortures at Abu Grahib, waterboarding in Guantanamo etc.

The book deals both with the official myths of the American Revolution and the myths of "the other America". What are those myths? Why is it important to rediscover the 18th century America's other myths?

"No taxation without representation", "All men were created equal" etc. Those are the Revolution's official myths. But that's only the surface, the smoke-screen. The revolution was made because the settlers wanted the Indian lands, and wanted to prevent the British Crown from abolishing slavery. On the other hand, it is important to rediscover the myths of the other America, because America has such a complex story, and you can't understand the US if you don't explore its richness of references, traditions and struggles. "Anti-Americanism" is naive and superficial.

Then what is the role of myths in your new novel?

It is a novel on the importance (and difficulty) of cultural "mestizaje", therefore we focus on how different myths and legends blended together. One thing that fascinated us is how the Mohawks "re-mixed" Christianity and the Gospels with elements of their previous beliefs.

Your debut novel Q was a pioneer in using a Creative Commons licence in the big publishing industry. Is there more knowledge of these things now, or do people still see you as rare animals?

Ten years have passed and the simple fact that many people know what this stuff is, well, this is already a progress. And many more artists are using those licences. The cultural battle goes on, but the army that's fighting it is stronger than it was when we started our career.

On the division of work within the collective: is there anything new compared to the way you worked on Q and 54?

There is no real "division of work" in our collective. Each member does all kinds of works, anything that's necessary in order to write the book. And each chapter of a book is constantly re-processed and re-written by all the members, in rotation, until everybody is satisfied. When someone says: I think that Wu Ming 1 wrote all the chapters with Cary Grant in them, while Wu Ming 2 wrote all the chapters set in Naples, well, that's entirely wrong. We don't work like that, the method is completely different.

How whas the novel received in Italy by the public and the critics?

Manituana is the Wu Ming novel that sold more copies in the first year of presence on the shelves. It sold even more than Q. Recently, it's been reprinted in paperback. People keep talking and writing about it, and it inspired many artists who created works as tributes to the novel. We're happy about it.

17.05.09 · on interviste