SOURCE: Pratolini, Vasco and Paul Tabori. “An Interview with Vasco Pratolini.” Contemporary Review 217 (1970): 253-57.

In the following interview with Tabori, Pratolini touches on his belief in the social responsibility of “critical realism” and explains his views on current literary trends, the future of Marxist theory, and youthful rebellion.

A stocky man with a huge dome of a forehead, horn rimmed glasses and an expression of general suspicion, Vasco Pratolini, the leading Marxist writer of Italy, lives far from his native Florence in a modern, sunny and noisy apartment house in Rome. The somewhat forbidding expression softens when he begins to talk—he becomes Southern in his gestures, in his spluttering eagerness to transform the rush of his thoughts into words. Highly articulate, he is constantly seeking for the mot juste in speech as he does in writing.

Born of a working class family, he grew up in the...