THE FURTHER CONFESSIONS OF ZENO

by Italo Svevo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1969

Italo Svevo died in 1928 at the age of sixty-four, and the publication of the unfinished sequel to his Confessions of Zeno (1923 under the aegis of James Joyce) will be welcomed by the coterie. Again this is an old man's muted but exquisitely balanced world. "". . . it is the future I am living now. . . not even a bona-fide present. It is outside time. Grammar does not posses a final tense."" Life outside time has the amusing corollary of providing background for other lives rather than assuming an active presence. Yet the progressive sedition of the body, urged forward by a capricious nature, requires a careful adjustment; comic-opera defeats of virility and health recur like punctiliously rendered drunken songs. Between mild adventures, some irritating memories, sessions at the gramophone, the old man ruefully contemplates the familiar excesses of his household. Svevo's style has the meticulous luminosity of Flaubert, the self-indulgent, nervy wit of Sterne. Also included in this collection is an amusing play, with the sardonic title, ""Regeneration.

Pub Date: June 1, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: University of California

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION