A Different Pier: Re-Writing Homosexuality into Pier Vittorio Tondelli

Abstract

The author reviews and challenges the critical construction of the gay Italian writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli. His critical approach to Tondelli rewrites homosexuality back into his books; even though with different agendas, both Catholic and gay critics have silenced this important part of Tondelli's oeuvre. Upon a close reading of several passages of Tondelli's last novel Separate Rooms (P. V. Tondelli, 1989/1992), the author shows how the book functions as a powerful exposure of the heterosexist claim of being the only natural sexuality, a claim that, the novel argues, is supported by official religion.