Curzio Maltese, the too short life of a champion | Massimo Gramellini

Curzio Maltese
state
the best journalist of his generationwhich would be mine too. None had his writing quality. You might disagree with an idea of ​​him, but never with an adjective of him.

He had put this extraordinary talent at the service of a lucid and melancholic mind, like an old-fashioned Milanese. He was lazy, scattered, romantic, deep, generous, intuitive, lightning. A champion, but not one of those in love with the ball and that’s it: he had a sense of goal.

He was born into a working-class family and had such a respect for money that he detested those who stole it as well as those who flaunted it. His allergy to the nouveau riche stemmed from him, not from social hatred as his critics, who evidently did not know him, believed.

Curzio hated no one, except himself occasionally, like everyone else.

Start with sport, with your beloved Milan. I remember his piece on Franco Baresi which should be studied in journalism schools. At the time he worked for the Milanese editorial staff of Sports Courier. From time to time his boss called me: Do you happen to have any news of your friend? disappeared. So we went to look for it in bars where spent hours in front of a pinball machine.

We dragged him into the office by the ears and in fifteen minutes he was writing a masterpiece which of course he forgot to send to the newspaper, so we had to chase him home to remind him.

Every great journalist chooses a great target.
His was Silvio Berlusconi.
He understood his skill and danger.

They went from sports to politics practically together. Curzio was the first to understand that commercial TV was the new dominant ideology ea hypothesize that the owner of that TV set up a party. No one believed him, and instead it seems to me that he was right.

Berlusconi was his nice obsession. I remember one of our vacations: a midnight swim with his girlfriends under the moon and him diving into the sea and explaining to me how the left should have written the law on conflict of interest.

But then he was the first to laugh at it, because Curzio could be gloomy from time to time, but he was never heavy. When Berlusconi, as he predicted, founded a party and came to power, we shut ourselves up for a week at home with Pino Corrias to write a joint book on the new master of Italy.

Curzio spent his days lying on the sofa looking at the ceiling and strumming the guitar. Then at night, while Pino and I were sleeping, he wrote and when we woke up he made us find an almost perfect chapter on the bedside table.

Life had them prematurely removed a beloved sister and had rewarded him with a wonderful wife and son.

Now I like to imagine it at the bar in the company of Gaber, Jannacci, Dario Fo and Beppe Viola: talking about cinema, his other great passion, and finally playing pinball for as long as he wants.