Books and Rough Business

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Books would seem to be one thing, and rough business another--except that the life of Tullio Pironti has brought both together. This mover and shaker in Italian arts and publishing began as a scuffling street kid in Naples, then enjoyed a boxing career that included two trips to the nationals, and only after that entered the book business. Yet i

Reviews

Every book should be a hard uppercut. A blow struck with the intention of awakening and bringing the reader face to face with the world in all its blinding brightness and illuminating details. Tullio Pironti's autobiography Books and Rough Business is a reminder of what it means to be an active and uncomfortable presence in the world, what it is to be an intellectual. Pironti's is a view on Italian and international culture from the narrow streets of the belly of Naples and his life is that of his city and his times. The street-smart kid become publisher recalls a life spent in the apparently contradictory realms of the boxing ring and the cultural salon. The names associated with Pironti and his publishing house (Fernanda Pivano, Nagib Mahfuz, Don De Lillo, Raymond

Carver, Raffaele Cutolo to mention a few) go to show that culture is nothing if not accompanied by sweat and good footwork.

Prof. Pasquale Verdicchio, University of California San Diego

Tullio Pironti's Books and Rough Business is, on the one hand, a wonderful metaphor about the publishing world today. Indeed, it could be both the metaphor and the reality of both worlds, Pironti's and that of Italian publishing. Like Pironti's own life of bobbing and weaving his way out of the squared ring and into the world of book production, the publishing world is, to be sure, a place where head feints and body shots can mean the difference between success and failure. The challenges of surviving in the ring anticipate those of the mid-size Italian publisher who, with clenched teeth and sweated brow, not only makes it through the last round but actually ends up winning the fight. No editor, big or small, can boast better writers than those who appear in Pironti's catalogue. Books and Rough Business is nicely translated in a style that aptly replicates the author's voice, a book that may very well keep the reader on the edge of his (even her) seat rooting for the underdog.

Anthony Julian Tamburri
Professor and Dean, Calandra Institute, Queens College/CUNY

Author Bio

Tullio Pironti was raised in central Naples, in a family of booksellers. Surviving the Allied bombing of World War II, in his teens he became a city middleweight champion, and twice competed as a finalist for the Italian national team. After quitting the ring, he began to publish privately out of a small shop, achieving international success in the early 1980s with Giuseppe Marrazzo's Camorrista, an investigation into Neapolitan organized crime, later made into a renowned movie starring Ben Gazzara. His press has been the first Italian house to publish Raymond Carver, Don DeLillo, and Naguib Mahfuz, among others. His memoir Books & Rough Business received over a hundred notices across Italy, and there are plans for a film adaptation.