A Few Personal Messages by Pierre Clémenti (Small Press)
I have a difficulty concerning what seems to be damaged dandies. It wasn’t sexual with me, but more of a rock n’ roll image of the dandy in trouble. Or cinematic characters and figures from literature fed my imagination of those who chose or had no choice but to be outsiders of the established world. And if, like Oscar Wilde, they are sent to prison, better yet! The late Pierre Clémenti was an actor who was in the right place and time until he was sent to an Italian prison for drugs in 1972. Good chance it was a set-up because narcotics were found in his apartment, which seemed to have an open door policy at the time due to the bohemian lifestyle. He spent seventeen months in jail until he was released due to insufficient evidence. What came out of his experience is the prison memoir A Few Messages, which is a jail-time masterpiece.
Clémenti’s most famous role was in Belle de jour, a film by Luis Buñuel. He was also in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Pigsty, Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, as well as Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, among others. He also made his films and was very much part of the European experimental movement in the late 1960s and 1970s. He also writes beautifully (with assistance from the translator from French to English, Claire Foster), and A Few Messages is heartfelt and sensual. Here and there, he reminds me of Jean Genet, but only when he writes about the solitude of prison life.
The frustration is that he doesn’t know when he will go to trial or the results. He’s placed in a position of waiting, and chances it will not turn out well. This book records his moments, and due to his movie stardom, he does have lawyers working for him and seeing Clémenti at least once a week. He is separated from a life he loves and can only bear with it and keep going.
The book is not a journal but a well-edited piece of literature haunted by loneliness and despair. Not a downer to read because I like his character as written here, so there is some lightness among the sordid degrees of depression. A superb exploration of Italian prison life, as well as being in the middle of the cultural storm. Great book.
You can get the book here: https://shop.smallpressnyc.com/products/a-few-personal-messages
