Born into a family of nobility, Tommaso Landolfi was an erudite man of letters - novelist, teller of tales, translator of Russian and French literature as well as a literary critic at large. He was also a reclusive, eccentric, peculiar gent addicted to gambling at the casinos.

This collection contains a most informative introductory essay written by Italo Calvino, a personal friend of Landolfi. Calvino's essay provides ample historical, cultural and literary context for Landolfi's writing.

The twenty-four stories in this collection may be read on many levels of meaning and analysis, or simply read for sheer enjoyment, enjoyment because these stories, which can be as fantastic, obsessive or horrific as the tales of Poe or Borges, are accessible and lots of fun. Personally, I'm always up for highly literary fiction that's also fun.. Thank you, Kathrine Jason, for your clear, easy-to-read English translation.

To give a taste of what is to be found in this collection, I offer the following comments on five of my favorite:

CHICKEN FATE
Told with tongue-in-cheek humor, this tale begins with a strong sense of foreboding as two chicken farmers, Ted and Joe, talk about how their new hormone-rich chicken feed is causing some serious changes in their chickens.

Joe begins by reporting how a chicken even looked at him as if the chicken was a human and not a chicken. The story moves along apace and Ted and Joe find out just how huge and how human-like their chickens turn out to be having eaten all those high-power hormones.

THE KISS
A tale of horror, where a notary and bachelor who is "hopelessly timid with women" is visited by a incorporeal creature who gives him kisses.

The story becomes progressively more fantastic, reaching a crescendo as we read, "On the last night, a gigantic, overturned chasm opened before his eyes - his body and soul - a grayish whirlpool like a matrix or a conch; it loomed, and from the apex of its spiral, it beckoned to him."

What is really beckoning to the notary? Is it his own sexuality? His own fear of women? His fear of death? --- Or, perhaps all of these. This story reminds me of a number of scenes from Fillini's film - City of Women.

THE WEREWOLF
A short-short story about two werewolves and their relationship to the moon told in first-person by one of the werewolves, a story that is something of a spoof on a traditional werewolf tale. The werewolf narrator tells us how his friend returns to their house one night carrying a bright round object, an object which turns out to be the moon. The werewolves refer to the moon as "she," a disgusting and an evil thing. They go ahead and stick the moon under the hood of their chimney. The moon immediately attempts to pass up through the flue. "Perhaps she had to compress and deform her flabby little body to pass through; foul droplets of liquid hissing into the fire." But this is the moon, after all, and the universe ultimately gets its own way. At every step throughout the story we are given the werewolf-narrator's running philosophy about fate and freedom. What a treat!

UXORICIDE
"Murdering people is easy. I have never understood all the fuss murderers make, or why they still haven't brought off or perpetrated the perfect crime; it must be simply that they haven't studied their victims closely enough." So Landolfi begins this story with tongue even deeper in his ironic cheek. The author's narrator goes on to tell us how he bound and gagged his wife before proceeding to verbally attack her in ways that would surely bring on her heart attack. Told with the panache of an aristocrat, every line of this story is laugh-aloud funny.

WORDS IN COMMOTION
One morning, after brushing his teeth and spitting out the mixture of toothpaste and saliva, the narrator relates what he sees, "I don't know how to explain this: not only were they words, but they were alive and darted this way and that in the sink, which, luckily, was empty."

He then has a running dialogue with a half dozen squiggly words before trying to gather them up. We read, "They didn't want to cooperate and put up a struggle, trying to befuddle me, but I forced them to explain themselves point by point. But they didn't want to be caught, to say the least, and fled every which way, so I caught and squeezed them in my cupped palm. Now it is one thing to live as a member of the decaying aristocracy, it is quite another to have the toothpaste and saliva you spit out transform into talking, unruly words right there in your very own sink, providing you with first-hand experience of decaying reality."

Ever since I read this outrageous story I have always wondered how I would react if my toothpaste transformed into a string of unruly words right there in my sink.


Tomasso Lendolfi, 1908-1979 ( )

Born into a family of nobility, Tommaso Landolfi was an erudite man of letters - author of novels and stories, translator of Russian and French writers and literary critic at large. He was also a reclusive, eccentric, peculiar man who enjoyed lots of gambling. Italo Calvino, a personal friend of Landolfi, writes a most informative introduction, providing the historical, cultural and literary context for Landolfi's writing. The 24 stories in this collection may be read on many levels of meaning and analysis, or simply read for sheer enjoyment, enjoyment because these stories, which can be as fantastic, obsessive or horrific as the tales of Poe or Borges, are accessible and fun. Thank you, Kathrine Jason, for your clear, easy-to-read English translation.

To give a taste of what is to be found in this collection, I offer the following comments on 5 stories:

Chicken Fate -- Told with tongue-in-cheek humor, this tale begins with a strong sense of foreboding as two chicken farmers, Ted and Joe, talk about how their new hormone-rich chicken feed is causing some serious changes in their chickens; Joe tells Ted how a chicken even looks at him as if it were a human and not a chicken. The story moves along and Ted and Joe find out just how huge and human-like their chickens turn out to be after having eaten all those hormones.

The Kiss - A tale of horror, where a notary and bachelor who is `hopelessly timid with women' is visited by a incorporeal creature who gives him kisses. The story becomes progressively more fantastic, reaching a crescendo as we read, "On the last night, a gigantic, overturned chasm opened before his eyes - his body and soul - a grayish whirlpool like a matrix or a conch; it loomed, and from the apex of its spiral, it beckoned to him." What is really beckoning to the notary? Is it his own sexuality? His own fear of women? His fear of death? --- Or, perhaps all of these. This story reminds me of a number of scenes from Fillini's film - City of Women.

The Werewolf - A short-short story about two werewolves and their relationship to the moon told in first-person by one of the werewolves, a story that is something of a spoof on a traditional werewolf tale. The werewolf narrator tells us how his friend returns to their house one night carrying a bright round object, which turns out to be the moon. The werewolves consider the moon, who they refer to as `she', a disgusting and evil thing and stick it under the hood of their chimney. The moon tries to pass up through the flue. We read, "Perhaps she had to compress and deform her flabby little body to pass through; foul droplets of liquid hissing into the fire . . . " But this is the moon, after all, and the universe ultimately gets its own way. And throughout the story we are given the werewolf-narrator's running philosophy about fate and freedom.

Uxoricide - "Murdering people is easy. I have never understood all the fuss murderers make, or why they still haven't brought off or perpetrated the perfect crime; it must be simply that they haven't studied their victims closely enough." So Landolfi begins this story with tongue even deeper in his ironic cheek. The author's narrator goes on to tell us how he bound and gagged his wife before proceeding to verbally attack her in ways that would surely bring on her heart attack. Told with the panache of an aristocrat, every line of this story is laugh-aloud funny.

Words in Commotion - One morning, after brushing his teeth and spitting out the mixture of toothpaste and saliva, the narrator relates what he sees, "I don't know how to explain this: not only were they words, but they were alive and darted this way and that in the sink, which, luckily, was empty." He then has a running dialogue with a half dozen squiggly words before trying to gather them up. We read, "They didn't want to cooperate and put up a struggle, trying to befuddle me, but I forced them to explain themselves point by point. But they didn't want to be caught, to say the least, and fled every which way, so I caught and squeezed them in my cupped palm . . . " Now it is one thing to live as a member of the decaying aristocracy, it is quite another to have the toothpaste and saliva you spit out transform into talking, unruly words right there in your very own sink, providing you with first-hand experience of decaying reality. This story gives a new and expanded meaning to Nietzsche's statement, "The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it." ( )

A great collection of short stories. After this you'll want to read more Landolfi. ( )