Luigi Pirandello and the Short Story

Thus begins a new section in this blog which I'll subtitle “Books we Like, Sparsely Written”. We move away from Brazil to a few noteworthy authors from the United States and Italy. These books are also conscientiously rendered and do not exhaust the reader with too much pontification and prose. Lest you think this site is only about new or recent books, I present you “The Tight Jacket” (La Marsina Stretta) by Luigi Pirandello. A master of short stories, Pirandello was very active in writing just before and after the first World War. Even in these dire times, Pirandello manages to find humor amidst tremendous pessimism and the general incomprehensibility of life surrounding the Great War. Interestingly, it is precisely before the moments of all out war that Pirandello's style undergoes a change. Suddenly he became concerned with relativism (we'll try to stay away from ism's from here on out), where his world outlook moves from 'incomprehensible' to 'unknowable.' This may sound far more despairing an outlook than before, but in my mind, there is an optimistic change of style that follows this change.

The predictable wartime aesthetic shift from omniscient narrator to a more sparsely structured story is here broken down even further. His stories are increasingly cast in the form of monologues that use either first-person narrative that is addressed directly to the reader, are often framed within a 'reported' dialogue, or attributed to a secondary observer. Ee may have entered the confusing realm that can be called a sort of literary cubism with multiple and layered voices, or we can just say that the author, as much as he appears to dispel personal responsibility for the world around him, is nevertheless fighting to find his place in the world, his own true vantage point and perspective, all from within. Read one way, it could be said that these shorter and 'unnarrated' narratives evince a deeper pessimism than even his plays. But considered differently, this breakdown is an attempt at something new. Cast aside the cast, the long list of characters, and deal with the individual voices, the personal voice. The individual is, after all, a representation of the entire world and not just a mere fragment.