One, None and a Hundred Thousand

Rarely a soliloquy is so interesting and fun to read. Pirandello has masterfully achieved both. This is the story of man searching through his monologues to find out himself as seen by others and as he assumes he really is wihout what he has assumed all his life. Each brief chapter is a exploration of the different aspects of the man's reality, examined now from a detached position. The reflections are serious and profound, but they keep a good sense of humor through out the whole narrative. It is a recommended reading for anybody.

After 13 years since I read this book for the first time, it still remains one of my favorites. I find it so dense of deep meanings, and so pleasant to read, that every now and then I'm still captured to read a chapter here and there, when I happen to have it in my hands. I will try to describe it in a few lines, despite that a comprehensive review of the book would require much more effort, which such a masterpiece would certainly deserve.It is an outstanding philosophical and psychological novel, fresh and humoristic, but deep and contemplative at the same time, that deals with the theme of 'identity'. It develops concepts that foresee our contemporary sensibility so well, that after almost a century their validity is perfectly unchanged. Reality is illusory, relative and subjective, and always becomes the expression of personal interpretations. Communication is made out of subjective distortions, of standardized definitions through `labels' that are attached to persons and situations. And the characters built by these labels end up by having their own lives, in the projection of our ego in the perception of the others, as well as in our occasional will to become what the others want us to be.But our identity is fluid, in a `continuous becoming'. It cannot be made still, in a definition, if not at the price of losing its dynamic character, or even its transitory reality. Such lack of identification leads each of us to become, in the end, absolutely alone, with our own misperception of ourselves, unknown even to ourselves.It is a 'cerebral' writing, full of contorted but still delicious meditations that give the reader the chance to recognize himself into the main character of the novel, "Vitangelo Moscarda". The style is however bright and colorful, at times able to admirably convey inner sensations in the description of certain landscapes, at times so immediate and simple in the use of humor and comicity, to effectively entertain the reader throughout the book.

Admirers of Pirandello's plays will be grateful for the new translation of the author's 1926 novel, "One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand," for it illuminates the background of Pirandello's theatrical works.The novel includes similar legerdemain; the reader observes the author playing with time, people and places. It reflects his cross-eyed way of looking at life and society, later seen in his major plays, "Six Characters in Search of an Author," "As You Desire Me" and "Tonight We Improvise." The central character in the novel, a small-town squire, looks in the mirror one day, touches a nostril and feels some pain. His wife tells him his nose tilts to the right, something he had not realized before. Catching sight of his reflection in the mirror again, he concludes that he possesses different personalities. So begins a search to discover his various selves. After a series of bizarre incidents, he is deserted by his wife and is declared insane. The court gives his money to a poorhouse; he becomes its first guest. In the poorhouse, he becomes the "no one"of the book's title. By being no one, the squire becomes everyone. He can be reborn again and again. "I am I and you are you," the squire, speaking as the first-person narrator of the novel, declares. In the end, he says: "I no longer look at myself in the mirror, and it never even occurs to me to want to know what has happened to my face and to my whole appearance. The one I had for the others must have seemed greatly changed and in a very comical way, judging by the wonder and the laughter that greeted me." Trying to explain a Pirandello plot is like trying to catch a tiger by the tail or walking with Vulcan on the lava of Mount Etna: dangerous. Put it this way: "One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand" is Pirandellian...

This short book by Pirandello is a quick read, but if you're like me the ideas will stay with you. Pirandello explores the nature of personal identity and the disconnect between self-image and the views that others have of us. It's not a great book, but it is a very good one and is definitely worth the afternoon spent reading.

This book is something you must read if you feel like people don't understand you. You must read this book when you think your friends know you. This is a book one must read alone, in a room, in front of a mirror - you'll be trying to catch yourself in the mirror as others see you.