{{Short description|Italian writer}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2016}} thumb|Pier Maria Pasinetti. '''Pier Maria (P.M.) Pasinetti''' (24 June 1913 Italy – 8 July 2006) was an Italian-American novelist, professor and journalist. The Italian director Francesco Pasinetti was his older brother. ==Biography== Borin in Venice, Pasinetti went to the United States in 1935 to study literature and writing. He spent some time at the Louisiana State University and developed a friendship with "Southern Fellowship" poet and writer Robert Penn Warren.
Pasinetti’s first published fiction in English appeared in the ''Southern Review''. He had been publishing journalism pieces in Italy since the age of eighteen. His first book, three novellas, was published in 1942. During World War II, he held lectureships in Goettingen, in lower Germany, and in Stockholm. After the war Pasinetti returned to the United States in 1946, teaching briefly at Bennington College. He studied with René Wellek and earned a doctorate in comparative literature (the first ever awarded) from Yale University. In 1949, he accepted a professorship in comparative literature and Italian at UCLA. Until his death in 2006, Pasinetti divided his time between Venice, Italy and Beverly Hills, California.
He died at Venice in 2006.
==Work==
Pasinetti was a corresponding journalist for ''Il Corriere della Sera'' (1960s-1990s), writing the column "Dall'estrema America" ("From Farthest America"). His novels include: ''Rosso veneziano'' or ''Venetian Red'' (1957), ''Il ponte dell'Accademia'' or ''From the Academy Bridge'' (1968), '' Melodramma'' or ''Melodrama'' (1993). Pasinetti helped found the Comparative Literature Department at UCLA. He was active as a scholar well into his 90s.
Pasinetti taught both comparative literature and Italian at the University of California at Los Angeles for over 40 years. He was a founding editor with Yale's Maynard Mack of the ''Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces''. W.W. Norton & Company has been publishing this standard college text since the mid-1970s. Pasinetti's companion essays include those on Erasmus' "In Praise of Folly" and Machievelli's ''The Prince''. Pasinetti also edited both the first and second editions of Norton's new "global" ''Anthology of World Literature''. Pasinetti served as a technical advisor for Joseph L. Mankiewicz's film ''Julius Caesar''. Also produced in 1953, but in Italy, was Michelangelo Antonioni's film ''La signora senza camelie''; Pasinetti wrote the screenplay with Antonioni, who was related to him by marriage. In this film, he also appears among the group of guests waiting for the arrival of the actress Clara Manni (Lucia Bosè) at a private house. In 1973, Pasinetti played a small acting part in Francesco Rosi's ''Lucky Luciano''.
==External links== *[http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp/warren%20essays/146-154_warren_clark_essay.pdf Clark, William Bedford. “WARREN AND PASINETTI: A STUDY IN FRIENDSHIP.” Clemson University.] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20100715094620/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840588,00.html ''Time'', 1965] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20070930231854/http://www2.wwnorton.com/college/titles/english/nawmsh/meet_the_author.htm Mack, Maynard (General Editor); ''The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces; Expanded Edition in One Volume.''] {{ISBN|0-393-97143-0}} • paper • 1997 *[https://web.archive.org/web/20070929110743/http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/041400/pasinetti.html Mt. Holyoke College. ''College Street Journal''. April 2000.] *[http://www.italianlosangeles.org/index.php?35&88&93 ''Italian Los Angeles: An Oral History Project.'' "Italian Journalists - a Little History on P.M. Pasinetti" ]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pasinetti, P. M.}} Category:Italian male journalists Category:Italian expatriates in the United States Category:Writers from Venice Category:1913 births Category:2006 deaths Category:20th-century Italian journalists Category:20th-century Italian male writers