SOURCE: "Consumerism Rampant," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4234, May 25, 1984, p. 596.

In the following review, Thompson discusses the themes present in Pasolini's Lutheran Letters which he states focuses on the moral state of Italy since Mussolini.

Lutheran Letters is a posthumous collection of the provocative articles which Pasolini started writing for the Corriere della sera in March, 1975; a series which spread to the weekly Il Mondo and which he continued up to the time of his death. The last piece in the collection is the address Pasolini was to have delivered at a Radical Party Congress in Florence two days after his body was found at Ostia: his appearance would have marked a return to the party political sphere from which he had been absent for over twenty-five years.

He was also planning the publication of his "Lutheran Letters" at the time of his death: the title is his...