my favorite show

notes on success

I started watching My Brilliant Friend on HBO during the pandemic. Between the endless hours working at the hospital and the confines of my apartment, I was lonely, and found comfort in watching, of all things, television in Italian, a series based on the novels by Elena Ferrante.

A friend recently shared something about Ferrante’s work that made me think more deeply about how she is having a wave of success on television that somehow seems to supersede her prolific nature as a novelist. Her other books have become a movie and a Netflix series (which I am watching now actually).

There has been much speculation about her identity, which remains utterly secretive despite her seemingly infinite success. A dazzling and miraculous way to exist if you ask me. Imagine writing something incredible and beloved by many, while simultaneously being utterly unrecognizable by the public—a gem, deeply hidden in the flurry of faces on the subway and the streets.

Aside from her identity, and her iconic work, the transformation of her writing has me thinking more about the relationship between the novel and the screen—they are somehow both inexplicably intertwined, yet utterly unrelated. The novel, always first, was something I often considered the superior art, born from nothing but imagination… the screen a mere copy of the original, duplicitous… but I’ve come to change my mind.

Seeing Elena Ferrante’s work dazzle on screen has been thrilling: the cinematography, the music, the acting, the dialogue (though truthfully, much of the Italian is lost on me and I read the subtitles). I am swept away.

It begs the question, does writing become more meaningful when it takes from in the physical world as cinema? Does the money behind on-screen productions mean the art in question becomes more culturally significant?

The answer is complicated because film inherently has a larger audience, and perhaps even acclaim or prestige.

I would say cinema makes literature more accessible to the public, to the majority of people who may not read often, may not find books as accessible, or who, in a bookstore, wouldn’t think to pick up a novel by an illustrious albeit mysterious Italian writer.

But there is something still utterly delicious about a book, the relationship between the writer and reader in the liminal space of two shared imaginations. I will always love this just a little more.

If nothing else, I hope I’ve left you with much to read, to watch and to dwell on. I’d love to hear what you think.

-M