He was the general manager of Einaudi in one of its happiest seasonsthat of growth in terms of market that has brought the publishing house to a firm central position in the Italian publishing panorama. And it was one writer And scholarOf Hispanic educationattentive to his Liguria and to the theme of the Islands. Ernesto Franco, who passed away yesterday in Genoa, his city, after a long illness, was a symbol of ironic and perhaps melancholic calm for the authors, collaborators and all of us who frequented him for work reasons.
Born in 1956, Einaudi director since ’98 after having worked first for Il Melangolo, Marietti and then for Garzanti, scholar of Borges and Cortázar (of which he edited an Einaudian Pleiade with all the stories) and discovereramong his favorite Hispanic authors, whose works he translated or edited, by the great Alvaro MutiFranco was a lover of literary games not as an escape but as a machine for building scenarios and ideas. He was a writer of connections, attentive to the construction of images, to their often mocking and revealing game. This was clearly seen, for example, in his Isolario (1994), a sort of story-map, a cartography of the imagination and even more so in the very recent Fantastic stories of real islandsalso published by Einaudi, where the author, in dialogue with the character of the Pilot, measures the metaphysical distance between myth and reality. “But Atlantis never existed, it is not a real island”, he tells him almost to provoke him, “It is a myth…”. The answer is enlightening: “And myths, in your opinion, do not exist? Atlantis is more than an island, I tell you, perhaps it deals badly with reality, but not with the truth”.
Here you are, Frank in literature but also in life he behaved like a navigator towards a possible truth, he was looking for and maybe he found his neverland. In Einaudi since ’91, still even if only briefly with the editor and founder, he had the opportunity to breathe the air of a tradition for a long time, before the tumultuous transition of the publishing house to Mondadori in ’94 with some important abandonments by authors and a climate of uncertainty. When he reached the head of the Ostrich, the aftermath could still be felt, but it was he who understood how to get out of it.. He managed to find the way, linked to the past, to the soul of the publishing house but also to the new challenges of the market, making it also the most profitable and most visible (and prestigious) brand in the Segrate galaxy. As a man of publishing, he knew well how the choice of books is a craft that borders on art. As a writer he knew equally well that literature is an art that requires a lot of craftsmanship..
His islands are mental places, “very difficult to circumscribe”as he explained on various occasions; his idea of publishing was that of a solid civil vocation, at the intersection of different genres. In this line of conduct there is all his long work – and discreet, avoiding as much as possible from exhibitionism and triumphalism – for example the decision to relaunch the glorious Einaudi “Struzzi”with great success.
He launched new series, based on intellectual debate, such as “Le vele” and very courageous undertakings such as the five volumes dedicated to the novel, almost an encyclopedia, edited by Franco Moretti. He had, in the Italian tradition especially of the years preceding him, the intellectual editor’s stepattentive to the quality of the proposal but also to the possibilities of the market – as happened for the “Stile Libero” series promoted by Severino Cesari and Paolo Repetti -; and with a precise objective, as he repeated sometimes in the – infrequent – interviews: to fill a missing role in society, which was the essence of the historical vocation of Struzzo.
In the 2000s, without any particular scandal, he abolished the famous “Wednesdays” where the editor and the most prestigious collaborators had met since the foundation. He was also a poet, with the collection Comet Woman (2020), where his passion for the sea vibrates in his verses. He worked, despite his illness, until his strength allowed him to, and then passed the baton for his top role to Paola Gallo. He leaves behind two children, many books and a great lesson.
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