This Business of Living: Diaries 1935-1950

On June 23rd, 1950, Pavese, Italy’s greatest modern writerreceived the coveted Strega Award for his novel AmongWomen Only. On August 26th, in a small hotel in his hometown of Turin, he took his own life. Shortly before hisdeath, he methodically destroyed all his private papers.His diary is all that remains and for this the contemporaryreader can be grateful.Contemporary speculation attributed this tragedy toeither an unhappy love affair with the American film starConstance Dawling or his growing disillusionment withthe Italian Communist Party. His Diaries, however, reveala man whose art was his only means of repressing thespecter of suicide which had haunted him since childhood:an obsession that finally overwhelmed him.As John Taylor notes, he possessed something muchmore precious than a political theory: a natural sensitivityto the plight and dignity of common people, be they bums,priests, grape-pickers, gas station attendants, office workers,or anonymous girls picked up on the street (though towomen, the author could-as he admitted-be as misogynousas he was affectionate). Bitter and incisive, This Businessof Living is both moving and painful to read and stands withJames Joyce’s Letters and Andre Gide’s Journals as one ofthe great literary testaments of the twentieth century.