When he committed suicide at age forty-one, Cesare Pavese (19081950) was one of Italy's best-known writers. A poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator, he had been profoundly influenced in his early years by American literature. But later he grew disaffected with American culture, coming to see it as materialistic and shallow. This book, the first full-length English-language study of Pavese in twenty years, examines his life and the evolution of his views of America through a chronological reading of his works.
LAWRENCE G. SMITHreceived his PhD in the history of American civilization from Harvard University and attended the University of Padua as a Fulbright scholar. He lives in New York City.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introducing Cesare Pavese
Part I
1. The End Game: Connie and Cesare
2. Family and Friends
3. Tina
4. Einaudi, Fernanda, and world war ii
5. Liberation?
Part II
6. Viva Walt Whitman
7. The peach of the world
8. Storia passata
Notes
Suggested Reading
Illustration Source Credits
Index
Smith starts his book with a fluent and well-researched short biography, pulling together the complicated story of Pavese's intellectual and personal formation, and the path to his suicide in 1950, by way of some spectacularly botched love affairs. The story is compelling. Times Literary Supplement
This richly detailed, consistently fascinating study uses both biographical and literary-critical approaches to give the fullest account to date of Pavese's engagement with the U.S. . . . Not only will this book serve as an admirable introduction for North American readers to a major Italian author who should be much better known, it will be of great interest to scholars of the reception of U.S. literature in 20th-century Europe. . . . Highly recommended. CHOICE
Smith's book has the merit of attention to detail and to careflS1
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