(11/08/2008) Short Sentimental Journey & Other Stories by Italo Svevo. Berkeley. 1967. University Of California Press. Translated From The Italian by Beryl de Zoete, L. Collison-Morley, & Ben Jonson. keywords: Literature Translated Italy. 319 pages. Jacket design by David Stanfield.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
This selection of Italo Svevo's shorter fiction shows the same qualities of wry humour combined with profound psychological insight that are found in CONFESSIONS OF ZENO and his other novels. The ironically named title story shows an elderly man setting out in high spirits on a journey without his wife - and revealing at every turn the need for her watchful eye. Old age with its self-deceptions, a theme which Svevo has made unique by his own, is also the subject of several other stories; thus in 'The Story of the Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl' the hero quietens his conscience by combining each visit from his mistress with an improving lecture, and deluding himself that the affair is good for his health, The remaining stories range from an unkind hoax played on the credulous vanity of an unsuccessful writer to the gay yet pointed fable 'Argo and his Master' in which a man fails to teach his dog Italian, but succeeds in learning dog. language and in recording some unconsciously devastating comments on man by his 'best friend'.
Italo Svevo was born in Trieste in 1861, Educated primarily in Bavaria, he wrote in Italian, but had to work as a young man as a French and German correspondence clerk in a Trieste bank. He was not happy in the business world and at the age of thirty-one he wrote and had published at his own expense A LIFE, It was followed four years later by AS A MAN GROWS OLDER. But both books were such failures that Svevo gave up writing for the next twenty years. During this time he became a good friend of James Joyce who was so impressed with Svevo's work that when CONFESSIONS OF ZENO was published several years later, Joyce was able to use his influence to make Svevo known in Europe. Svevo was just beginning to become recognized in Italy when he was killed in 1928 in a car accident.
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