SOURCE: "Pier Paolo Pasolini: Biciclettone," in Modern Languages, March, 1969, pp. 11-3.

In the following review, O'Neill discusses Pasolini's Biciclettone as an introduction to the themes and style found in his other novels.

One of the most interesting and original personalities of postwar Italian literature is Pier Paolo Pasolini, poet, film director and critic, and novelist.

Such is the complexity and development of the spiritual and intellectual capacities of Pasolini, such is the difficulty of language in his novels, written to a great extent not in Italian but in the Romanesco 'gangster' dialect of the capital's slums, that it is not easy for the philologically untrained reader of Italian literature to appreciate them as much as they deserve to be. Despite these difficulties, Pasolini's novella Biciclettone should be read, not only as a good example of that genre in which Italy has always been so strong, but also as...