In the 1968 Lawrence Mondo published from the unpublished works of Fenoglio the novel Il partigiano Johnny, that had to constitute integral part in Primavera di bellezza. Protagonist of the novel is the same Johnny in Primavera di bellezza, not died, but at the contrary hidden in a little house on the near hills of Alba. Despite it was forbidden to him to come in the city he goes down to Alba and he meets one teacher of his High school, Monti (in the reality Chiodi, teacher of philosophy of Fenoglio at the High school), which speaks him of Kierkegaard, but that harangue in a brothel the girls; there is also Corradi (the prof. Cocito), with which a discussion was imposed on the different interpretation that can be given to the partisan struggle. Monti defines Partisan whoever he will fight against the Fascist; Corradi, sustains instead, that all he takes is fighting the Fascism, also it is necessary to have clear the political ideas on how to reconstruct the society. Without a political conscience, a Partisan that fights the Fascism can be only a Robin Hood.
Following the proclamation Graziani, that recalled to the weapons of the republican neofascist army all the men from twenty to fifty years old, (punishment the firingsquad), Johnny wins the last hesitations and goes for the tall hills to enlist with the Partisan.
But the Partisan that he meets are Communist, that are withdrawing provisions from a village, and after having completed the load, they leave again for the base. Here he is introduced to Tito, a Leader group of Partisan action and from him he comes first questioned and then welcomed. Then he is called to the command, where the Commissioner Némega, the Captain Zucca and the Lieutenant Biondo waited for him. Here the irony of Fenoglio doesn't save up anybody.
The first action of war reconciles him with his new work of Partisan and unites him to his companions of struggle with Them he is face to face with the death, every moment. In a clash with the fascist Tito is killed; here Fenoglio reveals all his pity for his new brothers.
Fenoglio in this novel recovers tears and situations of others his stories of the Resistance, but is concentrated more on the figures of some characters; between these, the Biondo, emerges certainly, so strongly and serious "so honest also in that abstention of the encouragement". Johnny so still tied up to the memories of the classicals studied at the High school. During an action of the red of Némega, his team is dispersed, Johnny decides To not reach it to the established appointment, and he returns in the city.
However the nostalgia of Alba, devours him and he asks the people from the country if Alba is in the hands of the Fascists; but nobody knows nothing. From long time the Farmers don't go down in the city anymore. While he is walking He meets the industrial enologico B., something more of a knowledge. After a brief informative interview on the situation of Alba that was occuped and held by the fascist, he conducts him in his buried home in the rotten myrtle. In that industrial that lives in a House on the hill with his wife and his daughter and Mrs G. and her daughter dispersed, Fenoglio wanted to represent symbolically the position of so much Italian middle class of that years.
To a certain point he warns that any relationship is more possible between the people like that and him, therefore he decides to estrange from that house to reach the BadoglianeMilitary. But here Fenoglio also makes his observations, as the previous for the communist:
Concerning the political label, the Badoglianis Leaders were vaguely conservatories but their political profession, is necessary to recognize, it was void, it grazed dangerously the agnostic limbo. In some of them it was resolved in the pure and simple esprit de bataille. The antifascism however, was considered, over everything as a weapon, as powerful claim of the taste and the measure against the tragic fascist carnivali, was integral, absolute, indubitable.
Here the intellectual and bourgeois Johnny is found more to his ease, even if he felt him a different bird in that flock. The attitude of Fenoglio is never political, on the contrary humorous and ironic and his irony winds Badoglians and Communists in the same measure. After a period of relative safety, Johnny prepared himself to the action of war and the enterprise of Alba that it seems to him risky for the reasons that it was no possible to ceek the enlists, the Partisans were what they were, the flower and the dregs, as it always happens in all the Partisan Teams.
The conquest of Alba for Johnny-Fenoglio is not only a partisan action, but it is a kind of resurrezione of his soul, the Mecca in the religious sense. There is here also a figure of a woman, that remembers the Fulvia of "A private matter". Elda, one dispersed of Torino, a girl that represents everything soft and sweet that Partisan have left behind their shoulders. The appointment of Johnny with Elda is interrupted by gusts of machine gun , the partisan are dispersed by a formidable raking of men and transport between the hostility of the farmers that see to burn their houses and seized their good.
The pages of the escape of the partisan are the most dramatic. The loneliness and the desperation still gather Johnny, that captures a Fascist to exchange him with his friend Ettore, that was imprisoned. But in the last action Franco and Tarzan also fall him near, while he under the hostile draught has been ending the ammunition. " Two months after the war bad ended."