SOURCE: "Pasolini: Complex Life, Bloody Death," in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 25, 1982, p. 7.

In the following review, Steele considers a biography of Pasolini written by Enzo Siciliano and a collection of Pasolini's poetry, asserting that understanding Pasolini's work "is a possible, difficult and liberating task."

In November, 1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini's savagely maimed body was found near a shantytown outside Rome. Giuseppe Pelosi, a 17-year-old male prostitute, was quickly arrested, tried and convicted of the brutal murder. Yet a multitude of evidence suggests that Pelosi did not act alone: Pasolini's friends and his biographer assume that he was assassinated by the Italian ultra-right, to whom his life, work and influence were anathema. Thus in death as in life, the scandal and controversy surrounding Pasolini threaten to obscure his extraordinary and multifaceted accomplishments.

Indeed, politically motivated threats and turmoil marked Pasolini's career. At 27, he faced a legal charge...