What did Italians read in the twentieth century and what are the books that fascinated our fathers and grandfathers? FIRST Art, the first satellite site of FIRSTonline dedicated to the world of art and current culture, is reconstructing a review of the main bestsellers of the past. After the debut dedicated to Guido da Verona, Mario Mancini and Michele Giocondi wrote a service as documented as it is hilarious on Pitigrilli, the anarchist intellectual and then OVRA spy who finally became a conservative and believer (Giulio Andreotti was on the commission that ascertained his conversion….), who collected as many successes as sensational scandals.
The story of Pitigrilli can be found on the homepage of FIRST Arte, whose journalistic reports can be read for free throughout the summer. Here's how Mancini and Giocondi begin their story: "It is the turn of Pitigrilli, an eccentric, anarcho-conservative author who completes a broad narrative journey: from the libertine novels of the early XNUMXs, to the secular-skeptic works that followed, up to the religious conversion after the Second World War. Even his life is marked by the irregularity and volatility of his public behavior bordering on the paradoxical. Umberto Eco, who dedicated an essay to Pitigrilli entitled "The man who made my mother blush" (now collected in The superman of the masses, and. Nave di Teseo), approaches him, with caution, to writers such as Achille Campanile and Alberto Arbasino. Eco writes about the writer from Turin: “Pitigrilli was a pleasant writer, savory and quick, fulminating. He liked it, and it can still be liked today." And indeed it is so….
Continue reading on FIRST Art.
