Overview

Di Donato hits where you live, to remember until you die. Those who are familiar with the name Pietro di Donato usually begin and end their knowledge with his first novel, Christ in Concrete (1939). Here instead you will find the imaginative, pithy, and passionate word renderings of life according to the writer beyond that first novel. In every story you'll feel the fierce, unfiltered sensuality of a writer who turns contempt into expression, body parts into poetry, transgressions into confessions, and experiences into the basis for his political stands.

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9781599542225

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Reviews

Christ in Concrete was hailed by critics in the United States and abroad as a metaphor for the immigrant experience in America. [. . .] Pietro di Donato's power as a storyteller moved critics to hail him as an extraordinary talent.-New York Times Obituary, January 21, 1992 When the young man, myself, first read Christ in Concrete in 1939, the impact was indelible.-Studs Terkel, ""Preface"" to Christ in Concrete, 1993. Mr. di Donato is never half-hearted in describing the crucial moments of existence. No one will ever doze over his pages.-Charles Poore, ""Books of the Times,"" New York Times, 1939. I think the greatest American novel is Christ in Concrete by Pietro di Donato.-Jimmy Breslin, Publisher's Weekly, February 2002

Author Information

Pietro di Donato was born on April 3, 1911, in West Hoboken, New Jersey. When he was twelve years old his bricklayer father, Geremio, was killed in a building collapse close to the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan. As a result, young Peter, being the oldest male, had no choice but to drop out of school in the seventh grade to support his family as an apprentice bricklayer, under the watchful eye of his father's paesanos. Though he had little formal education, Di Donato discovered the French and Russian novelists when he was twenty-five years old. Inspired by the works of Èmile Zola and Leo Tolstoy, amongst others, he began to write, recounting the unusual and often brutal circumstances of his childhood after his father's death.In 1937 the first version of Christ in Concrete-a short story telling of the father's death-was published in Esquire magazine. Met by immediate acclaim, and being encouraged by Esquire's Arnold Gingrich, he expanded the short story into the full length novel which premiered in 1939, becoming a bestseller overnight after being chosen by the Book of the Month Club, beating out Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. During the almost five decades in the home he built for his family on Strong's Neck, on Long Island, di Donato went on to write five more books and numerous popular short stories in the magazines of the day. His last great work, The American Gospels, written between 1969 and 1989, has yet to be published. He died in 1992 in Stony Brook, New York. Fred L. Gardaphe is Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. After writing the ""Introduction"" to the Signet Classics reprint edition of Christ in Concrete (1993) he devoted much of his career to teaching, writing, and lecturing on di Donato's work, as well as other American writers of Italian descent. His books include Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative, Dagoes Read: Tradition and the Italian/American Writer, Moustache Pete is Dead!, Leaving Little Italy, and From Wiseguys to Wise Men: Masculinities and the Italian American Gangster. His latest study on humor and irony in Italian American Culture, will be published by Penn State University Press

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