Word: landolfi
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GOGOL'S WIFE by Tommaso Landolfi. 1 83 pages. New Directions...
...medieval bestiaries, the habits of birds, beasts and reptiles proclaimed the glory of God. In this strange and fitful collection of short stories, Italian Author Tommaso Landolfi has created a kind of 20th century bestiary in which the animals speak not to the godhead in man but to the arid reaches of the human heart...
...title story, Landolfi strikes a variation on a recurrent theme-man's need to destroy the objects of his love. For some obscure reason, Landolfi makes the classic Russian novelist Gogol the victim of his fantasy, perhaps because Gogol never married and was given to inventing imaginary affairs...
Sometimes farcical, and sometimes weighted with tragic irony, these stories show man forever recoiling from the world into his cramped visions of self. Landolfi himself seems to be a master of the art. A resident of San Remo, he lives in seclusion with his wife and two daughters, appears in public only to gamble at the tables at the local casino. Characteristically, he has authorized only one photograph for publication-a head shot, with his outspread hand masking his face. At 55, he is highly Prized in Italian literary circles but almost unknown to the general public. Perhaps the most...