[Note: There are 17 small jpgs on this page, most of them at the bottom. They do not take much time to load, and for the die-hard Guareschi fan (who else would be reading this??), I think they're worth waiting for.]

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The Club dei Ventitre (literally "Club of the 23") is the official Guareschi organization in Italy. Giovannino Guareschi's own son and daughter, Alberto and Carlotta Guareschi, work under its banner to keep their father's memory green by maintaining his archive, sponsoring a couple of websites, publishing a thrice-yearly journal (Il Folgiaccio), organizing a traveling photographic exhibition about Guareschi's life and work (see below), serving as a resource for graduate students researching dissertations on GG, and conducting various other activities. I say "organization," rather than the more frivolous "fan club," because-- as the foregoing suggests and as a 1998 visit to Italy confirmed for me--the Club's programme involves a tremendous amount of work! The Guareschis' energy and dedication to that work (which they undertake in addition to their on-going task of preparing and editing re-issues of their father's writings!) are nothing short of amazing.

The Club, which was founded in 1987, takes its name from best-selling but modest GG's frequent, joking references to his "23 readers"-- "two less," say his children, "than Allessandro Manzoni, the big Italian writer of the 19th century, claimed to have."  [I never took any note of these references in all my years as a reader of GG, until hearing this explanation of the Club's name ... but, sure enough, they're there in several of the Introductions to his books in English!] Members of the group are people from a variety of ages, circumstances, and walks of life; they include professionals, students, and other fans. But they are united, says Alberto Guareschi, in one particularity: "all are 'free spirits,' and they think with their heads." The Club's current (as of Aug., 1998) president is journalist Giovanni Lugaresi.

Club "headquarters" is in Roncole Verdi, in what was the Guareschi family's restaurant (built by GG in 1964 and subsequently run, until its closure in 1995, by Alberto Guareschi and his family). The building is located a stone's throw (literally!) from the house in which composer Giuseppe Verdi was born, in what is now "Piazza Giovannino Guareschi" (and I was reminded by fellow GG fan Roland Hirsch that there's a Verdi-Manzoni connection, as well-- the composer's Requiem was written for Manzoni--thus completing a neat little circle).

One's first impression, on viewing the Club's HQ, is that it must have been a cool restaurant! But it's hard to find fault with the use the building's been put to since. The lower level houses the permanent version of the above-mentioned travelling pictoral exhibition, "Tutto il Mondo di Guareschi," which tells the story of GG and of the role he played in the intellectual and political life of the turbulent post-war period in Italy. The upper level contains the Club's offices, whose bookshelves groan with copies of GG's works in many languages. Don Camillo is everywhere, of course, but it's very plain to see that the Club is committed to the thesis that there was much more to Guareschi than even his most celebrated creation.

The odd visitor to Roncole will undoubtedly be pleased to see that, immediately adjacent to the Club's HQ, the cafe' GG bought in 1957 is still open. Indeed, I can't think of anything the sounds nicer than getting a copy of one of GG's books (all in print in Italy) and leafing through it while sipping something at one of the outdoor tables (in the shadow of Verdi's birthplace in "Piazza Giovannino Guareschi"). And in my imagination, I'm there right now...

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