It's never too late to start living: the American lesson

In 1994, at the age of 73, Alvin Straight, a farmer from Iowa, travelled 240 miles on a lawn tractor to visit his brother who had had a heart attack. Six long weeks covered at 5 miles per hour, about 8 km/h. This story was transformed by David Lynch into the film A True Story.

Jack Nicholson about Schmidt travels in a camper van from Nebraska to Denver after his wife's death to convince her daughter not to marry her boyfriend. Same means of transport but a different destination, in this case the home of Hemingway in Key West, for the first American film by Virzì entitled Ella & John - The Leisure Seeker, with Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. In the book Journey with Charlie, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck tells of his journey to the United States on a super-equipped van, renamed Ronzinante, accompanied by a French poodle.

These stories have two elements in common: the American on the road, celebrated historically by Jack Kerouac with the book of the same name; but compared to the writer Beat, in these cases there is no will to grow and become an adult through the journey: on the contrary, a desire to almost rejuvenate, or at least feel alive, grinding miles. An attachment to the earth, to asphalt, to people, a desire still to remain attached to life that, inexorably, is ending.

The last season is a book by Don Robertson, published by Nutrimenti and translated by Nicola Manuppelli, which tells the story of a couple, husband and wife from a life and a half, who decide on matches for a trip by car without a precise destination, because they feel obliged to know what they are leaving, or at least to try us. Howard and Anne, these are the names of the two protagonists, sitting on a Pontiac and with the cat in the rear seat, will begin a long journey retracing the history of their lives. That path that led them to fall in love, their family, the pains and joys of their lives. After all, they remember the long road that took them into that car somewhere in the huge American road network.

A story told with sensitivity but without easy sentimentalism, in fact. I understand more and more why Don Robertson was one of Stephen King's favourite writers. Different nightmares set in the same world. The real one. In the 1960s Alberto Manzi conducted a program in Italy entitled Non è mai mai troppo tardi (Not too late) where he taught Italians, no longer of school age, to read and write. The last season teaches us that it is never too late to get lost and live. Living for real life.