SOURCE: "Between Sin and Scandal," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4385, April 17, 1987, p. 408.

In the following review, McCarthy discusses what Pasolini's Lettere 1940–1954 reveals about the themes found in his work.

This first volume of Pasolini's collected letters covers the period from his undergraduate years, and recounts the apprenticeship, persecution and tribulations of a writer who continues to hypnotize Italian intellectuals. In his Cronologia Nico Naldini has filled in some of the gaps in Enzo Siciliano's biography. Although Siciliano's judgments on Pasolini's life were generally correct, his book lacked detail. Drawing on Pasolini's unpublished diaries, the Quaderni rossi, Naldini provides much information on the Friulan years and in particular on Pasolini's homosexuality.

The volume opens in June 1940, and the Bologna period, 1940–43, reveals a young writer who was reaching maturity during the last years of Fascism. Pasolini's father was an army officer and an admirer of Mussolini, while Pasolini, who was...