In Italics

Book excerpt: Poet and novelist, Antonio D'Alfonso has been writing essays and giving in-depth interviews for twenty years. This collection contains the most important of these texts which have been reworked into a coherent entity. D'Alfonso discusses the importance of ethnic awareness which he places at the antipodes of territorial nationalism for which ethnicity is too often mistaken. The themes raised in this eclectic book relate to general culture, language, literature, film, and publishing (he founded Guernica Editions in 1978). Though it is the Italian perspective (which the author prefers to call Italic) that is favored, the themes and concepts developed are applicable to other cultures and countries. In Italics is a polemical and unblushing defense for the individual's right to a collective Imaginary, no matter which country one lives in.