Volume 49, Number 14 · September 26, 2002
The Genius of Trieste
By J.M. Coetzee
As a Man Grows Older
by Italo Svevo, translated from the Italian by Beryl de Zoete, with an introduction by James Lasdun
New York Review Books, 235 pp., $12.95 (paper)
Emilio's Carnival
by Italo Svevo, translated from the Italian by Beth Archer Brombert, with an introduction by Victor Brombert
Yale University Press, 233 pp., $30.00; $14.95 (paper)
Zeno's Conscience
by Italo Svevo, translated from the Italian and with an introduction by William Weaver, and a prefaceby Elizabeth Hardwick
Knopf, 437 pp., $20.00
Memoir of Italo Svevo
by Livia Veneziani Svevo, translated from the Italian by Isabel Quigly
Marlboro Press/Northwestern University Press, 178 pp., $15.95 (paper)
A man—a very big man beside whom you feel very small—invites you to meet his four daughters and choose one to marry. Their names all begin with A; your name begins with Z. You pay a visit and try to make polite conversation, but insults come tumbling out of your mouth. You find yourself telling risqué jokes that are met with frosty silence. In the dark you whisper seductive words to the prettiest A; when the lights come on you find you have been wooing the A with the squint. You lean nonchalantly on your umbrella; the umbrella snaps in two; everyone laughs.
Review, 4395 words
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