‘In an era of reality TV and noxious cycles of dubious fame, Ferrante believes the work should stand on its own. She will only submit to interviews over email, going so far as to turn down a meaty profile opportunity in The New Yorker when the magazine insisted on an in-person interview. “Without reserve,” Ferrante wrote me in an email exchange, “I can say that my entire identity is in the books I write.”
The Neapolitan books reek of lived moments, and when asked about the series’ inspiration Ferrante said she intentionally named one of her main characters after her pseudonym. ” I gave my name to the narrator to make my job easier,” she wrote. “Anyone who writes knows that the most complicated thing is the rendering of events and characters in such a way that they are not realistic but real. In order for this to happen it is necessary to believe in the story one is working on…. I had a friend whom I cared for very much, and I began from that experience. But real events don’t count much when one writes; at most they are like getting shoved while out on the street.”‘
[Via]
