Oreste Del Buono

Oreste Del Buono (5 March 1923 – 30 September 2003) was an Italian author, journalist, translator, literary critic and screenwriter.

Life Family provenance Oreste Del Buono (often identified both by himself and by others simply as "OdB") was born at Poggio, a small village a couple of kilometers inland from the western coast of the island of Elba. He was the eldest of the three children of Alessandro and Vincenzina Tesei del Buono. The family was an ancient and distinguished one. Pilade Del Buono (1852 - 1930), was an entrepreneurial mining engineer and briefly a prominent politician. On the subject of advertising he also contributed a regular column in the Milan-based magazine, Panorama between April 1987 and February 1992. The column subsequently resurfaced in L'espresso, a rival publication. Among his other translations worthy of note were books by André Gide, Guy de Maupassant, Michel Butor, Michel Tournier, Marguerite Yourcenar, Nathalie Sarraute, Denis Diderot, Benjamin Constant and Claude Gutman.

Novels Del Buono was a fringe member of the Group 63 circle of "Neoavanguardia" novelists. His 1961 novel "Per pura ingratitudine", published by Feltrinelli, was representative of this genre. His other novels included "Un intero minuto" ("An entire minute", 1959), "L'amore senza storie" (1960), "Né vivere né morire" ("Neither living nor dead", 1966), "Un tocco in più" ("One more touch", 1966), "I peggiori anni della nostra vita" ("The worst years of our life", 1971), "La nostra età", ("Our era" 1974), "La parte difficile" ("The difficult bit", 1975 and republished 2003), "La parte difficile" ("Come back!", 1976), "Un'ombra dietro il cuore" ("A shadow behind the heart", 1978), "Il comune spettatore" ("The shared viewer", 1979), "Se m'innamorassi di te" ("Falling in love with you", 1980), "La talpa di città" ("The urban mole", 1984), "La nostra classe dirigente" ("Our ruling class", 1986), "La debolezza di scrivere" ("The weakness for writing", 1987), "La vita sola" ("One life", 1989), "Acqua alla gola" ("Water down the throat", 1992) and "Amici, amici degli amici, maestri" ("Friends, friend of friends, leaders", 1994). But he also brought to the fore and then nurtured works by a large number of younger and otherwise unknown Italian authors such as Achille Campanile, Giovannino Guareschi and Giorgio Scerbanenco, Carletto Manzoni, Tiziano Sclavi, Renato Olivieri, Marcello Marchesi, Giorgio Forattini Emilio Giannelli, Augusto De Angelis, Paolo Villaggio and Giulio Angioni. Above all, he was an enthusiastic promoter of what one or two more staid critics might have dismissed as "popular culture". He teamed up with the young Umberto Eco to compile a tongue-in-cheek but resolutely straight-faced collection of seven essays in celebration of James Bond. He also compiled an early Encyclopaedia of Italian popular comics ("fumetti"). Published in 1969, at a time when many intellectuals were inclined to take a dismissive approach to "kids' comics", the work pioneered a more serious evaluation of an important tranche of popular culture. A generation later the del Buono approach had for many become mainstream. Del Buono's long-standing fascination with children's (and adults') comics del Buono to be identified in a number of quarters as "the man who discovered Peanuts in (and for) Italy". In 1980/81 he enjoyed a brief career as a pundit and sports commentator, featuring on the news broadcasts fronted by Maurizio Costanzo on the short-lived PIN (non-government owned television channel) launched by the Rizzoli Group. He also worked on the Turinese newspaper La Stampa, imposing his own approach on the Specchio dei tempi (Mirror of the times) column which he contributed in succession to Giulio De Benedetti.

Broadcast media Del Buono's television work included his 1965 collaboration with Franco Enriquez on the screenplay for the television mini-series version of Resurrezione (based on Tolstoy's 1899 novel Resurrection).

For the RAI, the national broadcaster, he worked with Carmelo Bene to develop Le interviste impossibili ("The impossible interviews"), focusing on fantasy interviews with celebrities from the past. Subjects included Edmondo De Amicis, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vladimir Mayakovsky. The actor Bene played the parts of the interviewees. Amici, amici degli amici, maestri..., Milano, Baldini & Castoldi, 1994.

Also worthy of mention are the anthologies he compiled and edited, sometimes in collaboration with his friend Lietta Tornabuoni and his many translations of literary classics from French and English.