Scan barcode
believeinyou's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
sunn_bleach's review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
One of those books that challenges the way I thought a story could be written. This is the closest I’ve found to a book that is written (unsurprisingly) like a movie - not in terms of cinematic action, but in descriptions that read like screen directions, where the depiction of reality is less true-true than story-true. Fascinating book with beautiful prose that responds in the negative to Kierkegaard’s leap of faith (something I’m noticing has happened a few times in the last year of reading).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Classism
Moderate: Sexual assault
Minor: Cursing
zachcarter's review
5.0
Pasolini’s satire on the bourgeois family struck an unexpectedly spiritual tone that elevated the first part - the arrival and interactions of the visitor - to a much more profound meditation on what it means to want, particularly as it relates to (class) divisions in society. Really awesome, and I loved reading Pasolini for the first time after seeing a few of his films. He’s an amazing writer!
adam613's review
4.0
"I am filled by questions which no one can answer."
In NYRB's latest release from Italian author Pier Paolo Pasolini, Theorem is a parable filled with imagery, symbolism, passion for the personal and the political. Throughout his life, Pasolini was no stranger to controversy in his homeland being an outspoken advocate against modernity and all of its trappings. Whether through film or the written word, his work screamed antiestablishment political views including the liberation of sexual orientation and practice. He was a proponent of the proletariat and was never shy about his views on the corruption by the perpetuation of the bourgeoisie and the industrialization of Italy and the rest of the world.
"As the reader will already have noticed, this, rather than being a story, is what in the sciences is called 'a report': so it is full of information; therefore, technically, its shape rather than being that of 'a message,', is that of 'a code'. Moreover, it is not realistic but, on the contrary, is emblematic - enigmatic - so that any preliminary information about the identity of the characters has a purely indicative value - it serves the concreteness, not the substance of things."
Whether this is a realistic story or not (it's not), Pasolini has a way with words that creates a vivid portrayal of a spiritual experience. His characters are seduced by modern life and all that comes with being part of the upper and upper middle class in post-war Italy. In fact, while they tumble and are left reeling, the family is unable to truly experience their own transformation or transfiguration when a truly spiritual experience presents itself. What used to be one of the most important aspects of a person has also been bastardized by industrialization. Through writings on class, lust, and love, Pasolini's craftily engaging chapters of prose and poetry, create a sensual tale that is big on intention and flawed at parts, yet not enough to take away from this entertaining and intelligent piece of modern literature. Drawing on the metaphysical and the sexual strings, (which some may argue is metaphysical in nature), Theorem is a work not to be missed for fans of modern, antiestablishment, philosophical translated literature.
FFO: Camus, Sartre, Buzzati, Moravia, NYRB
"We repeat, this is not a realistic story, it is a parable."
"Now, in the way he looks at him, with the pleading glance of someone asking another for a sacrifice - because of a selfishness of which he himself is the victim - there is a kind of light, almost a slight smile."
"Is merely a mad process of identification with that of those living beings
whom something that is immensely ours sets us beside."
"With each of them you have identified yourself, poor thing: and do not know instead down there, before their birth, you are the only one obedient to the First Father."
"That makes Paolo even more of a son. That indecisive caress is not a sign of possession but a prayer to the one who possesses. Now Paolo is one of those men who are used to being always the possessors. All his life he has always possessed; the idea has never occurred to him even for an instant not to possess."
"So the Oneness in the design of the desert became something that was within those who suffered it. They were overwhelmed by it. It was the intolerable pain of a sick person who, racked with suffering, rolls from side to side in the bed and on the one side feels the desert and on the other still the desert and at the moment when he rolls over to change positions feels at one and the same time the desire to forget it and to find it once more."
"Yes, of course, what do young people do, intelligent people from well-off families, if not talk about literature and painting? Maybe even with friends from lower down the social scale - a little cruder but also more plagued by ambition. Talk about literature and painting, vulgar and factious, ready to turn everything upside-down, already beginning to warm their young bottoms café chairs already warmed by the bottoms of the hermetic poets."
"So whatever happens to a member of the bourgeoisie, even a miracle or an experience of divine love could never awaken in him the ancient metaphysical feeling of the peasant ages. Becoming instead in him an arid struggle with his own conscience."
"So while this peasant saint can be saved even if in an historical backwater, no member of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, can be saved either as an individual or as a collective whole? As an individual, because he no longer has a soul but a conscience - a noble one perhaps but by its very nature coarse and limited; as a collective whole, because his history is running out without leaving traces, turning from being the history of the first industries to being the history of the complete industrialization of the world."
In NYRB's latest release from Italian author Pier Paolo Pasolini, Theorem is a parable filled with imagery, symbolism, passion for the personal and the political. Throughout his life, Pasolini was no stranger to controversy in his homeland being an outspoken advocate against modernity and all of its trappings. Whether through film or the written word, his work screamed antiestablishment political views including the liberation of sexual orientation and practice. He was a proponent of the proletariat and was never shy about his views on the corruption by the perpetuation of the bourgeoisie and the industrialization of Italy and the rest of the world.
"As the reader will already have noticed, this, rather than being a story, is what in the sciences is called 'a report': so it is full of information; therefore, technically, its shape rather than being that of 'a message,', is that of 'a code'. Moreover, it is not realistic but, on the contrary, is emblematic - enigmatic - so that any preliminary information about the identity of the characters has a purely indicative value - it serves the concreteness, not the substance of things."
Whether this is a realistic story or not (it's not), Pasolini has a way with words that creates a vivid portrayal of a spiritual experience. His characters are seduced by modern life and all that comes with being part of the upper and upper middle class in post-war Italy. In fact, while they tumble and are left reeling, the family is unable to truly experience their own transformation or transfiguration when a truly spiritual experience presents itself. What used to be one of the most important aspects of a person has also been bastardized by industrialization. Through writings on class, lust, and love, Pasolini's craftily engaging chapters of prose and poetry, create a sensual tale that is big on intention and flawed at parts, yet not enough to take away from this entertaining and intelligent piece of modern literature. Drawing on the metaphysical and the sexual strings, (which some may argue is metaphysical in nature), Theorem is a work not to be missed for fans of modern, antiestablishment, philosophical translated literature.
FFO: Camus, Sartre, Buzzati, Moravia, NYRB
"We repeat, this is not a realistic story, it is a parable."
"Now, in the way he looks at him, with the pleading glance of someone asking another for a sacrifice - because of a selfishness of which he himself is the victim - there is a kind of light, almost a slight smile."
"Is merely a mad process of identification with that of those living beings
whom something that is immensely ours sets us beside."
"With each of them you have identified yourself, poor thing: and do not know instead down there, before their birth, you are the only one obedient to the First Father."
"That makes Paolo even more of a son. That indecisive caress is not a sign of possession but a prayer to the one who possesses. Now Paolo is one of those men who are used to being always the possessors. All his life he has always possessed; the idea has never occurred to him even for an instant not to possess."
"So the Oneness in the design of the desert became something that was within those who suffered it. They were overwhelmed by it. It was the intolerable pain of a sick person who, racked with suffering, rolls from side to side in the bed and on the one side feels the desert and on the other still the desert and at the moment when he rolls over to change positions feels at one and the same time the desire to forget it and to find it once more."
"Yes, of course, what do young people do, intelligent people from well-off families, if not talk about literature and painting? Maybe even with friends from lower down the social scale - a little cruder but also more plagued by ambition. Talk about literature and painting, vulgar and factious, ready to turn everything upside-down, already beginning to warm their young bottoms café chairs already warmed by the bottoms of the hermetic poets."
"So whatever happens to a member of the bourgeoisie, even a miracle or an experience of divine love could never awaken in him the ancient metaphysical feeling of the peasant ages. Becoming instead in him an arid struggle with his own conscience."
"So while this peasant saint can be saved even if in an historical backwater, no member of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, can be saved either as an individual or as a collective whole? As an individual, because he no longer has a soul but a conscience - a noble one perhaps but by its very nature coarse and limited; as a collective whole, because his history is running out without leaving traces, turning from being the history of the first industries to being the history of the complete industrialization of the world."
ebussa47's review
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Prefer the movie to the book...the most the book adds is some well-written poetry about the characters, desire, and capitalism.
antoniosantos's review against another edition
4.0
na verdade, 4,5 estrelas.
um dos livros mais criativos, audaciosos e com críticas/metáforas intrigantes sobre socialismo e capitalismo, com representações bíblicas demonstrando um enredo movido a obsessão, desejo e desespero.
pasolini transcreve em uma narrativa fácil e turva de compreensão uma forma peculiar de tornar degradações de personagens em uma grande alegoria para compreender a burguesia; sua forma religiosa e consciente se transforma em uma subversiva descrição de efeitos e causas, que provoca uma série de eventos que perpassam uma análise sobre como a beleza está atrelada às ânsias humanas mais ocultas quando se mostra evidente.
um dos livros mais criativos, audaciosos e com críticas/metáforas intrigantes sobre socialismo e capitalismo, com representações bíblicas demonstrando um enredo movido a obsessão, desejo e desespero.
pasolini transcreve em uma narrativa fácil e turva de compreensão uma forma peculiar de tornar degradações de personagens em uma grande alegoria para compreender a burguesia; sua forma religiosa e consciente se transforma em uma subversiva descrição de efeitos e causas, que provoca uma série de eventos que perpassam uma análise sobre como a beleza está atrelada às ânsias humanas mais ocultas quando se mostra evidente.
kuningas's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
augustopelle's review against another edition
3.0
La prosa es muy experimental y absolutamente todo el libro es libre interpretación. Por un lado la primera parte se hace muy llevadera, llena de prosa poética y personajes singulares. Por el otro, la segunda parte introduce el concepto de abstracción en otro nivel. Supongo que está muy bueno para un club de lectura, debates o análisis académico.