Since the path I take through the cult authors is to be completely out of my hands, I couldn't simply start with the first author in the book, Kathy Acker, as that just isn't random enough. So I chose my starting point by rolling dice. The dice came up with Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Pasolini, the great Italian movie maker. Director of The Gospel According to St Matthew, Il Decameron and Salò. Turns out he is also a writer. And a poet, intellectual, journalist, linguist, philospher, playwright, painter and political figure.
Two of his novels are listed in his biography in Cult Fiction, The Ragazzi and A Violent Life, but only A Violent Life is listed as a must read. So I chose to read A Violent Life (1959) by Pier Paolo Pasolini to start my project. I was pleased to find that the book was available from my library, in a weathered 1968 edition (translated by William Weaver).* * * * * * * * * *
A Violent Life is the story of Tommaso, who lives in a shanty town in Rome, following Tommaso as he grows. The real focus of the book however is the harsh life of the Italian urban poor in the middle of the 20th century. In this way, the title refers both to the violence in Tommaso's life – that he deals out or that he suffers – and the brutality of the existence of the poor. Pasolini was a communist and the harships of the underclass was a favourite subject of his. The book doesn't read as being overtly political, however.
The book is neorealist in subject matter and hyperrealistic in style, lingering on the petty details of a scene. It is also very much character-driven; it is nothing but the story of Tommaso and whatever general conclusions you wish to draw about the life of the very poor.
It is a great novel. The writing is extremely vivid and the story is enthralling. However, perhaps because it is so far from my own experiences in time and circumstances, I found it rather hard to completely understand Tommaso. I suspect this will be an ongoing issue as I move on to other books.
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Apparently Pasolini attracted quite a bit of controversy for his novels. The Ragazzi perhaps a bit more than A Violent Life. Ostensibly it was due to violence and obscenity. I didn't really find A Violent Life to be excessively violent or obscene. (Pasolini, however, was fully capable of obscenity. His last movie, Salò, based on de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom, is considered the most controversial movie ever because of its obscene content.)
I wonder if the controversy was more due to his uncompromising honesty in exposing the bleakness of the lives of the underclass. I can imagine that in a politically polarised post-war Italy, this message was quite unwelcome, being too unflattering for the right and too pessimistic for the left. His homosexuality and his treatment of homosexuality in his works was surely also a source of controversy.
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