Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante

A collection of weekly columns for The Guardian on topics like female friendships, exclamation marks, and luck.

For Ferrante fans looking for glimpses behind the curtain

In 2018, Elena Ferrante wrote a short, weekly column for the The Guardian newspaper on topics prompted by the editors: smoking, ellipses, and mothers, for example. Each gives a peak into her life and mind, while also maintaining her wall.

She describes throwing away her childhood diaries; of digging deep into what seems ordinary; of the importance of luck in an artist’s breakthrough; of the way writing distances her from other aspects of life - even her children when they ask her to play. I know a lot about that.

My interest quickened in the essays about writing: about paring back prose to create screenplays; about Maggie Gyllenhaal’s production of The Lost Daughter; of the damaging urge to make ‘every line a marvel;’ of her experiments in re-thinking the great male heroes of literature as female. She talks about anonymity too: of all that can be discovered about an artist through their work itself.

At around 500 words each, these meditative bonbons can be gobbled up in two or three short sittings. Ferrante herself calls them ‘brief trickles of ink’ - and it’s worth bearing this in mind when starting. They are brief trickles of ink and are much more casual than the deeply considered nature of her prose.

Incidental Inventions will appeal more to Ferrante fans looking for glimpses behind the curtain. For readers new to Elena Ferrante, start with The Days of Abandonment, My Brilliant Friend, or The Lost Daughter.

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