GAITHER STEWART—I read German writing and the archives of STASI, State Security, or Staatssicherheit about Field-Marshal Paulus. And I pondered the act of crossover from one ideology to another. Crossover for him would have meant changing from everything he had yet experienced in his military and family life to a new morality. Crossover points unwaveringly at transformation. Transformation is more than mere change, a different matter altogether. Though change makes us uneasy and anxious, we are still capable of returning to our original state. Even the change from a familiar place to another may make us feel uneasy. For we have lost a point of reference, a sense of belonging. That sensation of loss triggers our nostalgias. That loss can become a black hole in our existence. So though I feel sorry for the Field-Marshal, I still have not decided what I believe moved Friedrich Paulus.
"Gaither Stewart"
-
-
Stranger in a Strange Land: Notes, anecdotes, and memories of a weeklong interview with Paul Bowles in Tangier, Morocco
36 minutes readGAITHER STEWART—A few more words about Paul Bowles and the cinema world: shortly after my interview with Bowles appeared in Rome’s Espresso Magazine – one of the first interviews with the writer published in Italy – I had the privilege of interviewing the film director, Bertolucci [1988] who said he was looking around for ideas for his next film, which he wanted to do in some exotic place. He had Africa in mind. I only mentioned Bowles’ book “Under The Sheltering Sky” and my recent interview with him, so great was my surprise when some time later Bertolucci announced he was going to do a film version of that novel, with Paul Bowles himself as consultant. In the end, Bowles, still active, an unwilling traveler, did travel some with the cast in the Sahara. Unfortunately I can’t say what Bowles really thought of the Bertolucci film entitled “Té nel deserto.” [Tea In The Desert.]
-
GAITHER STEWART—The stability of that world was nonetheless shaky. The West was engaged in more serious matters than democracy: capitalism searched desperately for new markets for its survival. America’s expansion however was hampered by the nuclear-armed evil empire behind that wall in Berlin. The USA ousted from Southeast Asia, the British Empire out of India, the French out of North Africa. The whole globe whirled. Where it would stop nobody knew. Neither the US government, nor the CIA, nor European Communists even imagined a traitorous Gorbachev coming to power in Russia. No one suspected that the dissolution of the USSR was just around the corner. No one would seem more surprised (and I sometimes believe disappointed) than the CIA.
-
More than 100,000 demonstrate in Rome against advancing fascism
10 minutes readGAITHER STEWART—While the 100,000 marched in Rome yesterday, November 10, in protest against Italy’s fascistic government, 40,000 persons showed up on Turin’s Piazza Castello in support of the project of the railway tunnel through the Alps toward France and known by the Italian acronym TAV, meaning “high speed railway”.
-
GAITHER STEWART—Twenty years later, in the year 2000, another of many family tragedies struck the Agnellis: Gianni’s only male son, Edoardo, committed suicide at age 46. Born in New York, schooled in Turin and university studies at Princeton, Edoardo was the natural male heir to FIAT leadership, as per tradition passing from father to son. Yet he was both inept and disinterested in the business world. Edoardo’s interests were mysticism, Buddhism and Islam, defense of the poor … and furthermore he was allegedly anti-capitalist. His life was solitude and unhappiness, caught in the trap between what he wanted to do with his life and what his loving family expected of him: Edoardo was both the love and the desperation of his adoring parents. Yet no more than bourgeois capitalism can be compatible with the authentic interests of the working class, Edoardo Agnelli and the capitalism of which FIAT was the symbol were incompatible. Leadership of the Agnelli empire had no place in Edoardo’s world.