Amarcord
Sir: Mr Ackroyd was kind enough to give the above book (which I translated from Italian) an excellent review, in spite of the fact that he is obviously totally unsympathetic to Fellini's films, and indeed to Italian films in general. However, I must complain about two gross inaccuracies in his article.
Firstly, he dismisses Tonino Guerra as a mere ghost writer, whereas he is, in fact, a very distinguished and celebrated writer of screenplays, his work including scripts for L'Avventura, La Notte, The Red Desert, The Eclipse and Blow-Up. This is extremely relevant, since Amarcord is not a novel in the usual sense of the word, but a literary version of the screenplay, on which Fellini and Guerra collaborated closely.. All these facts could have been gleaned by your reviewer if he had simply taken the trouble to read the back flap of the jacket. Secondly, Mr Ackroyd states quite erroneously that the action of the book takes place during the Hitler War. Here again, he had only to refer to the blurb on the front flap to find out that it is set in 1935. Moreover, he cannot have read the book with much care, if he came away with the impression that it was in wartime, or does he seriously believe that the liner Rex, with all its lights ablaze, was cruising cheerfully through the Mediterranean (and on her way to enemy America!) in the middle of a war?
This is not the first time Mr Ackroyd has been guilty of inaccuracy. On a former, occasion, he systematically tore a translation of mine to shreds, on the "assumption" that I had, as it were, censored it. "Tut, tut," he sneered, "mind your language". Yet I had done no more than reproduce faithfully the tone, and language, of the original, which was innocent of any obscenities. On his own admission, Mr Ackroyd cannot read Italian, so how dare he make these sweeping assumptions? (He also assumes Signor Guerra is a ghost writer). Would it not be possible to persuade your reviewers to verify their facts, instead of filling their notices with false assumptions and incorrect statements? It is bad enough that Mr Ackroyd should be mistaken about the original Italian (which he cannot understand), but surely he understands English, so why the statement about the scene being set during the Hitler War? I can only assume that he has a "ghost writer" to write his criticisms, and that this poor man understands neither
Italian nor English. One more point: pity the poor translator! — when Mr Ackroyd hates th.e book, he blames the translator, when he likes it he has not even the grace to mention my name!
Nina Rootes
Blaenydree, Llanfair Waterdine, Knighton, Powys
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