Christ in Concrete

I had the privilege of spending an afternoon at the Long Island home of Pietro Di Donato many, many years ago when a friend of mine, John Liscio,took me to visit. Mr. Di Donato's father, I was told, died when he fell into a vat of cement back in the days when there were no labor laws to protect workers. The book was shaped from this incidence. Powerful book, and an even more powerful man. Both left an indelible impression.

This is the finest book I have ever read about Immigrants. As an Italian American it is especially rewarding. If made into a real film (not like the cheesy 1949 version)it could be a masterpiece -- it could be to Scorsese what Schindler's list is to Spielberg. One note -- wait to read Fred Gardaphe's introduction until after you read the novel as he gives away a lot of the story.

"Christ in Concrete," by Pietro di Donato, is a superb novel of the Italian-American experience. The Signet Classic edition contains a preface by Studs Terkel and a very informative introduction by Fred L. Gardaphe. Terkel notes that the book was first published in 1939, and compares it to John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath.""Christ" tells the story of an urban, working-class Italian-American family in the early part of the 20th century. Much of the book is focused on Paul, a young man who finds work as a bricklayer.di Donato writes with a vivid style; he attains a muscular poetry of blood and concrete as he describes the workers' "symphony of struggle." He brings to life both the specifics of Italian-American life as well as the larger multicultural world in which Paul's family lives. The book deals with Italian-American folk beliefs, tenement living, bilingualism, and a young man's sexual awakening. di Donato also writes on the theme of the common person's struggle against uncaring officialdom. He also explores the question of faith in the face of suffering.There are many vivid scenes and characters in this novel. One account of an Italian-American feast is particularly memorable. There are also some really graphic, horrifying descriptions of workplace death and injury. I believe that this powerful novel belongs on the shelf with all those great books that sympathetically look at the oppressed and the overworked in the United States. And for another author who has written eloquently on the Italian-American experience, I recommend the fiction of John Fante.

This tale of the Italian-American experience told through the voice of a young man whose father is killed in a bizarre construction accident is overwhelming. It is perhaps the most overlooked American classic.

You have seen those photos from the thirties- construction workers sitting on a girder hundreds of feet above Manhatten, lunch pail next to them, seemingly unaware that their legs are dangling over an abyss. Christ in Concrete is about those workers and that abyss.This is one of the strangest, most original books I have ever read, a lost classic of American modernism. I cannot think of an author to compare Di Donato to- the mundane and fobidding ironies of Celine come to mind, but so do the mythic qualities of Brecht. It is sort of a reverse image of The Fountainhead- here are brilliant and passionate people literally being crushed by architechture.Di Donato's style is loud, blunt and operatic. He rushes through cinematic images and superdramatic tragedies, almost as though he fears he is going to bore you. The events are fairly autobiographical. It's rather like meeting a charming but slightly frightening stranger who tells you thier life story: you are entranced and sympatheic, but fully unnerved.