Theorem
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This tale about seduction, obsession, family, and the confines of capitalism is one of director Pier Paolo Pasolini's most fascinating creations, based on his transcendent film of the same name.
Theorem is the most enigmatic of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s four novels. The book started as a poem and took shape both as a work of fiction and a film, also called Theorem, released the same year. In short prose chapters interspersed with stark passages of poetry, Pasolini tells a story of transfiguration and trauma.
To the suburban mansion of a prosperous Milanese businessman comes a mysterious and beautiful young man who invites himself to stay. From the beginning he exercises a strange fascination on the inhabitants of the house, and soon everyone, from the busy father to the frustrated mother, from the yearning daughter to the weak-willed son to the housemaid from the country, has fallen in love with him. Then, as mysteriously as he appeared, the infatuating young man departs. How will these people he has touched so deeply do without him? Is there a passage out of the spiritual desert of modern capitalism into a new awakening, both of the senses and of the soul? Only questions remain at the end of a book that is at once a bedroom comedy, a political novel, and a religious parable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pasolini (Boys Alive) undertakes both a sensual odyssey and an incisive critique of the lack of social conscience of the Italian bourgeoisie in his 1969 novel. A handsome stranger, who is given no name but consistently referred to as "the guest," seduces, in turn, five members of an affluent Milanese household: the maid, father, mother, and both children. The guest inevitably departs, leaving behind a very different family: Emilia, the maid, attains sainthood with a shocking decision; son Pietro leaves home to pursue art; Paolo, the patriarch, donates his factory to its workers; wife Lucia pursues younger men; and daughter Odetta becomes catatonic. Pasolini (1922–1975) displays compassion for the individual members of the family and their idleness, longing, and anomie, while the acts of seduction provide erotic tension, with lush descriptions of setting layering sensuality into the story. The detached, omniscient narrator calls the book variously "a report" and "a parable," offering aloof observations accentuated by the book's format, relayed in brief, titled chapters. Evocative poems on first love and fate appear throughout, and two late chapters pose a series of provocative questions illuminating the narrative's underlying themes. This is a penetrating exploration of existential meaning.
