P. M. Pasinetti
Pier-Maria Pasinetti was an influential Italian novelist and academic born on June 24, 1913, in Venice, Italy. He began his scholarly journey with a focus on literature, particularly the works of James Joyce, during his studies at the University of Padua and later at prestigious institutions such as Oxford and Louisiana State University. His literary career spanned several decades, during which he became known for his innovative narrative techniques that employed fragmented perspectives and multiple storylines.
Pasinetti's significant body of work includes a tetralogy published between 1959 and 1971 that chronicles the lives of two Venetian families against the backdrop of major historical events, such as the rise of fascism. His novels explore themes of identity, memory, and the impacts of technology and war on human relationships, all while reflecting the complexities of contemporary Italian society. He was heavily influenced by both Thomas Mann and James Joyce, which shaped his narrative style and thematic concerns.
Throughout his long academic career, which included a tenure at the University of California, Los Angeles, Pasinetti published extensively, contributing to journalism, film studies, and theoretical works on language and media. Recognized for his literary contributions, he was a frequent contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature until his death on August 7, 2006. Pasinetti is celebrated as one of the prominent Italian novelists of the postwar era, appreciated for his compassionate character portrayals and profound insights into the human condition.
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P. M. Pasinetti
- Born: June 24, 1913
- Birthplace: Venice, Italy
- Died: August 7, 2006
- Place of death:
Biography
Pier-Maria Pasinetti was born on June 24, 1913, in Venice, Italy. A precocious student whose father was a successful doctor, Pasinetti enjoyed the benefits of privilege, including a year of study at Oxford University beginning in 1934 and an additional year in Ireland, where he researched the novels of James Joyce. Indeed, his undergraduate degree in literature from the University of Padua centered on a thesis that examined Joyce’s narrative experimentation. Awarded a scholarship to study at Louisiana State University under poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren, Pasinetti published his first stories in the United States; these stories experimented with fragmented point of view and multiple narrative lines.
After completing his master’s degree in 1936, he returned to Europe and from the vantage point of several university teaching appointments watched with alarm the rise of Adolf Hitler. He tried to arrange an exit visa back to the United States but would not return there until after World War II, when he completed his doctoral thesis in comparative literature at Yale University in 1949. He immediately accepted a position in comparative literature and Italian at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he remained for more than half a century until his death on August 7, 2006.
During nearly five decades as an academic, Pasinetti published widely, producing journalism pieces that examined American culture; theoretical works on the function of language in the media age and the role of propaganda in political activism; and, most prominently, film studies. However, his defining achievement was an ambitious tetralogy published between 1959 and 1971, consisting of: Rosso veneziano (1959; Venetian Red, 1960), La confusione (1964; The Smile on the Face of the Lion, 1965), Il Ponte dell’Accademia (1968; From the Academy Bridge, 1970), and Domani improvvisamente (1971; Suddenly Tomorrow: A Novel, 1973). These four novels traced nearly three decades in the lives of two Venetian families, beginning with the rise of fascism in the late 1930’s. In juxtaposing the two families, one dedicated to artistic pursuits, the other to political activism, Pasinetti explored, without heavy-handed judgments or an intrusive agenda of his own, the evolution of contemporary Italy as it mirrored the wider struggle of twentieth century humanity to understand the implications of war, propaganda, technology, and political allegiance. Although these are clearly novels of ideas, like those of Thomas Mann, whose influence Pasinetti often acknowledged, the narratives draw out those ideas through the compassionate depiction of characters caught up in emotional traumas amid the chaos of unfolding history, struggling amid the pressures of love and death, family and friendships to assert identity in an increasingly dehumanized technological age. In addition, drawing on Pasinetti’s admiration of Joyce, his narrative presentation splinters the story line among multiple perspectives, thus foregrounding, with audacious irony, the problematic nature of conventional assumptions about narrative reliability itself and, by extension, revealing the essential subjectivity of memory and history.
Given the sheer range and intellectual reach of his narrative vision, the longevity of his career (he published his last novel in his eighties), and his probing postmodern explorations into the functions of language itself, Pasinetti not surprisingly was frequently short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature. When he died at the age of ninety-three, he was widely recognized among the most important Italian novelists of the postwar era.