Giovannino Guareschi: Early years
Born on May 1, 1908 in the Northern Italian village of Fontanelle di Roccabianca, Giovannino Guareschi was the son of a schoolteacher mother and an entrepreneur father. One has to smile at the fact that this child who would grow up to become such a well-known opponent of the Left should have made his debut on a May Day. Indeed, as Winthrop Sargeant recounts in a 1952 Life magazine feature on Guareschi:

"At the time when [Giovannino] first saw the light in a small bedchamber in the building that [also] housed the Socialist party headquarters, a huge party rally was taking place in the street below.... Overcome with the drama of Nino's birth on so auspicious an occasion, the Socialist leader [Giovanni Faraboli] rushed into the bedchamber and held the newborn infant in the window for the crowd to see.  'The champion of the workers is born,' he cried, amid frenzied applause from the workers below."

The irony there is worthy of one of Guareschi's own stories (and the episode is faintly echoed in the first of the Don Camillo films, when Mayor Peppone steps out on his balcony and presents his newborn son to a crowd of cheering townspeople assembled below, proclaiming, "Another comrade!").

Young Giovannino, because of his mother's job, spent much time during his formative, pre-school years in the care of his mother's grandmother. From her, the future storyteller later said, he learned many of the stories of the people of his Po River valley region. Then his formal schooling began at age 6, and things went well until 1918, when his father decided that the promising student should become a naval engineer.

Giovannino was enrolled in the Royal Technical School where, he would say, "I had a terrible time understanding what the instructors were teaching, on account of the fact that I had absolutely no interest in technical studies." After a difficult two years, his parents changed tacks and enrolled him in grammar school for a liberal arts education. It was here that Guareschi shone, studying classics and becoming a top student at the school.

Unfortunately, his secondary education would be interrupted by the severe economic hard times experienced by his family (and many others) under Mussolini's regime in the 1920's. This culminated in a financial crash in 1926 during which the family went bankrupt. Giovannino, who had been a boarding pupil at his school, returned home to help his family by working. He eventually finished high school as a day student and began studies at the University of Parma, but he finally left there without a degree, holding a series of odd jobs before establishing himself as a writer.

Milan and the War
Success found him in Milan, where his way with words and skill with pen and ink took him from contributor to staff member to editor of the weekly paper Bertoldo. These were the 1930's and early '40's, days of heavy censorship by the Fascist government, so there was no question of Guareschi's yet becoming known for the overt political satire which would be his ultimate forte. Under the circumstances of the times, however, the commentary in some of his New Yorker-esque cartoons and humorous articles for Bertoldo would have to be considered remarkably biting. Meanwhile, outside the paper, the busy writer produced a variety of other published works during these years, from a comic book to several novels (two of which were eventually translated into English).

It was also in this period--in 1940, to be precise--that Giovannino Guareschi married his Parmese sweetheart, Ennia Pallini; not long after, they produced a different sort of work--a son, Alberto. And at this time something else of importance was happening around them: war was brewing in Europe.

Though the author had already done his compulsory military service as a younger man (and even though Ennia was expecting their second child), he found himself called up again in 1943, at the height of the war. But no sooner had he reported and been posted to the field, than he and thousands of others in the Italian army became victims of an odd twist of fate. It began as good news: at home, the Nazi-aligned, Fascist rule of Benito Mussolini was overthrown, and the new Italian government signed a cease-fire with the Allies. Far from being "freed" by the deal, however, the Italian officers and soldiers were left virtually stranded in the field, now at the mercy of their former German partners. And all who would not agree to serve the Nazis were imprisoned for the duration of the war.

Because the Italians were not technically prisoners of war (their status, officially, was that of "military internee"), the rules of the Geneva Convention did not cover their captivity. They suffered terribly; Guareschi was reduced to half his weight during his internment and later claimed, in a famous phrase, that he survived only because he had vowed, "I will not die, even if they kill me." Others were not so fortunate.

Those two years in the German Lager (prison camp) were critical ones for Guareschi, focusing and deepening his energy and commitments in a way that would remain apparent for the rest of his life. He never stopped writing in the camp, whether recording melancholy reflections in his personal diary or composing humorous pieces for the morale of his prison-mates (these collected prison writings were later published, and an English version exists). When the war ended, it was his fervent hope that men like those fellow prisoners--resilient souls who in their time together proved that, despite lacking every material comfort, it is possible for people to create for themselves a civilized and even spiritual environment--would be willing to do their part to build the new Italy.

Giovannino Guareschi himself was so willing, and it was after the war that he would produce his mature writings: the ones which had the biggest impact in his lifetime and for which he is most remembered today.

Candido and Don Camillo
On returning home from the Nazi internment camp in 1945, Giovannino Guareschi set about regaining his strength and re-establishing his literary presence in Milan. His weekly paper, Bertoldo, had been a casualty of war, but the resourceful editor was able to reassemble many of the old crowd (which included some of the leading Italian journalists/humorists of the day) and begin a new paper, Candido. Like its predecessor, Candido would publish literary pieces, cartoons, and commentary; however, this being free, post-Fascist Italy, the new paper would differ from the old in being able to take on overtly political targets.

And there were many such targets, for the Italian political situation at the end of WWII was in something of a mess. The country may have formally withdrawn from the War upon the overthrow of Mussolini, but there had been no immediate peace: instead, the conflict against the Allies was simply replaced by intense civil strife. Even as the new government was establishing itself in Rome in 1943, the Nazis were setting up a puppet regime under the deposed "Il Duce" and his supporters in the North. Rival Resistance groups--including many composed of long-oppressed Communists and Socialists--arose to oppose the remnants of Italian Fascism, but the common goal of these groups did not exactly unite them. Indeed, in the post-War years they would compete to claim credit for Fascism's eventual demise.

Among the important national questions to be settled at the War's end was the fate of the Monarchy, and a referendum held in 1946 resulted in the transformation of the Kingdom of Italy into the Italian Republic. Guareschi and his paper had unsuccessfully supported the King, but there was no time for Candido's editor to retreat and lick his political wounds. In just two years, the new Republic would hold its first general elections, and the mustachio'd monarchist's services as a propagandist were required by his second-choice party, the one he thought had the best chance of defeating the Communists and keeping Italy out of Stalin's orbit. And, sure enough, in 1948, Alcide De Gasperi and the Christian Democrats did defeat the Communists in the national elections, with what was regarded as the indispensable assistance of Giovannino Guareschi. The writer's weapons included cartoons, slogans, editorials, and ... a book.

The book, entitled Mondo piccolo: Don Camillo, was actually a collection of pieces that had already appeared in one of Candido's most popular weekly features--a continuing series of humorous tales about the colorful parish priest of a quaint, Northern Italian Everyvillage who is forced to deal with the fact that his town's newly-elected, post-war government is Communist. That "Don Camillo," the feisty priest, always proves up to the challenge posed by his formidable foe, "Mayor Peppone," is largely thanks to the guidance of the Christ on the altar cross, with whom the embattled cleric holds frequent, frank discussions (with the reader privy to both sides of the conversation!). The Don Camillo tales were fable-like, yet they reflected a very real situation; they wickedly satirized their Red target, yet they displayed a genuine tenderness on the part of the author toward all of his characters. And, collected in book form, they made for an almost instant international bestseller.

That he became an overnight popular sensation obviously had a huge effect on Guareschi's life, but it did not really change him: that is, he went on being Italy's self-appointed political gadfly, using the pages of Candido both to fight Communism and to criticize "his" party (the Christian Democrats) when he felt it did not lead responsibly (and this was in an era when criticizing government figures--even if the criticism was well-founded--could be illegal). But even as their creator provoked and sometimes outright alienated establishment figures on both the Left and the Right, Don Camillo and Peppone continued to delight their fans (who ranged from peasants to Popes), both in print and on the big screen (in a series of films with Fernandel and Gino Cervi as the beloved priest and mayor).

Of course, Guareschi wrote on non-political topics, as well, and he was particularly successful with another continuing series of humorous newspaper essays (also periodically collected into books), this one depicting the joys and trials of family life in the new Italy. The family in question was his own--or, rather, a stylized version of it, with himself as bemused paterfamilias, his wife as scatterbrained but wise earth mother, and his precocious children in the role of ... well, precocious children (Americans, think Dave Barry or Calvin Trillen or even "Please Don't Eat the Daisies"). As in the case of the Don Camillo stories, there's just the right combination of laughter and life lesson in the delightful family pieces. Indeed, they'd have made a great basis for a TV sitcom.

Roncole, Prison, and the End
In the early 1950's, Guareschi decided to move his family to the country--to the village of Roncole Verdi, where the multi-talented author had a new family home built according to his own design. The move, though it was intended to get him out of the big city, did not signify a retreat from the public arena on Guareschi's part: he included in the home's plan a private apartment/office for himself so that he could do serious work on Candido there.

And in 1954 the journalist found himself very much in the public eye on account of Candido. Specifically, he ended up on the wrong side of a libel suit after he published in the paper what he believed were two shocking wartime letters between then-Resistance-leader Alcide De Gasperi (yes, the same Christian Democratic Prime Minister GG helped get elected in 1948) and the British command. In one missive, De Gasperi allegedly encouraged the Allies to bomb the city of Rome in order to demoralize German collaborators and bring a swifter end to the war. Of course, De Gasperi denied authorship, and a court agreed with him. Convinced of his source, however, Guareschi would not recant... and, as this was his second run-in with the courts in as many years (in 1952 he'd published a cartoon mocking the Italian president--a crime in those days--and earned a suspended sentence), a prison sentence was mandated.

Guareschi would later complain that his 14-month stint in jail in Parma was, in some ways, worse than his time in the German Lager. The days were filled with meaningless activity, he said, and in the beginning he was not allowed to write. When he did get pen and paper, he made good use of the time, penning among other things the screenplay for the third Don Camillo film. He was released early for good behavior.

Demoralized by his experience, GG was also experiencing health problems (some traceable all the way back to those two years in the German Lager). In 1956 he began spending several months a year in Switzerland for his constitution; then in 1957 he stepped down as editor of Candido. A retirement? Not at all: Guareschi continued as a contributor to Candido, and he also undertook a non-literary enterprise, purchasing a cafe in Roncole and running it himself.

The early '60's, however, did see a dramatic slow-down in Guareschi's activity. In 1961, the company that had published Candido for 15 years bowed to external political pressure from the Left and dropped the paper. This was a severe blow to GG, and then in 1962 he suffered a heart attack. Recovery took some time. Down but not out, the embattled journalist expanded his other business, adding a restaurant onto his cafe in 1964. He also continued to write, of course, but much of his later work was tinged with melancholy. The new Italy, he feared, was not shaping up all that well. Even as the Red menace abated in the post-Stalin years, so the twin spectres of Modernism and Affluence (the latter with its attendant Complacency) arose as a challenge to the kind of society hoped for by some in those heady days right after the War.

To the regret of fans both at home and abroad, Giovannino Guareschi's distinctive voice was silenced by a fatal heart attack in the summer of 1968. He was only 60 years old, and the prime of his career had lasted just 20 years. His popularity and influence, however, have lasted much longer.