Another interesting week of reading - and fascinating insights from Ellie. I was struck with the idea that each observer creates a unique version of the observed. That each person takes the same set of facts and creates their own truth from it. I’ve often mulled on the idea that everyone who reads a novel has their own unique vision of it - what the characters look like, how they dress, what their homes and landscapes look like. This is true even when the author has described those things in detail. Imagine how many million Elizabeth Bennetts there are or have been. How many Holden Caulfields. And how cross we can be when we see another person’s version brought to life on screen! This line of thought got me noodling on the idea of the universe contained within each one of us. A unique, never-to-be-repeated place that’s completely inaccessible to anyone else. For a terrific pop-culture meditation on this I recommend Stephen King’s horror-free Life of Chuck.
I’m doing ok with the Italian names! Personally I don’t need a character list (that sounds like a lot more work for you 😆).
I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s thoughts on this week.
You make me think about how books are always necessarily a personal experience and an intimate dialogue between writer and reader. I find it beautiful more than horror-inducing to be honest, the way art can be both so visceral and transformative. I guess while Pirandello is giving me a lot of food for thought, I'm not catastrophizing like he is yet. Glad you're finding the reading interesting Sharon, and I'll add Life of Chuck to my list!
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
I wrote a short story titled “What’s in a name?” for a workshop last year. Sadly, nobody got the Shakespeare reference…
Thank you for these weekly posts, Ellie.
So far I had no problems with the names or keeping track of the characters. But at times it seems like the text was intentionally difficult, as if Pirandello wanted the readers to put in some effort to understand what he was saying. Or it could be the translation.
The original text is just as difficult to read, it's both outdated and deliberately uses obscure terms. In that sense, the translation is pretty accurate. But let me know if there's any passages you find particularly hard! And aw, I can't resist a good Shakespeare quote either.
Thank you for the article, Ellie! It's fascinating. I'm reading the book slowly but with great pleasure, noting down ideas as I progress. In this section, the arguments intensify dramatically, and though Pirandello writes with humor and occasional absurdity, his points are truly unsettling. Everything rests on illusion—the illusion of reality and social contracts—along with our fundamental inability to understand how we appear to others. Rather than driving people mad, I think this realization leads to apathy and depression, followed by acceptance. We simply continue living within the illusion, ignoring it until the next wave of apathy strikes.
The motif about one's own voice is particularly intriguing. In Pirandello's era, recording and listening to your voice was as rare and expensive as taking photos and videos of yourself. Yet hearing one's recorded voice remains an unsettling experience—it always sounds foreign, requiring time to accept it as our own.
Now I reflect on how people had it simpler then, rarely having to confront their other selves.
And I found the Hoffman interview excerpt compelling. I'm planning to watch Tootsie—it's fascinating that Hoffman didn't consider it a comedy. I'm eager to view his female transformation through this perspective and through Pirandello's ideas
I've been also thinking about the "normal" reactions people have to existential questions, I feel like apathy/grief/acceptance is not necessarily the most common one? Maybe I don't have much faith in humanity, to me most people just ignore these questions on purpose or out of stupidity. And when they do tackle them, they avoid thinking about it too much—otherwise we'd have many more Moscardas on our hands.
Moscarda perhaps should read Walt Whitman, “ I contain multitudes.”
Funny, I know Pirandello read Whitman, but I don't know if he had any strong opinion on him. I'll need to research.
Another interesting week of reading - and fascinating insights from Ellie. I was struck with the idea that each observer creates a unique version of the observed. That each person takes the same set of facts and creates their own truth from it. I’ve often mulled on the idea that everyone who reads a novel has their own unique vision of it - what the characters look like, how they dress, what their homes and landscapes look like. This is true even when the author has described those things in detail. Imagine how many million Elizabeth Bennetts there are or have been. How many Holden Caulfields. And how cross we can be when we see another person’s version brought to life on screen! This line of thought got me noodling on the idea of the universe contained within each one of us. A unique, never-to-be-repeated place that’s completely inaccessible to anyone else. For a terrific pop-culture meditation on this I recommend Stephen King’s horror-free Life of Chuck.
I’m doing ok with the Italian names! Personally I don’t need a character list (that sounds like a lot more work for you 😆).
I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s thoughts on this week.
You make me think about how books are always necessarily a personal experience and an intimate dialogue between writer and reader. I find it beautiful more than horror-inducing to be honest, the way art can be both so visceral and transformative. I guess while Pirandello is giving me a lot of food for thought, I'm not catastrophizing like he is yet. Glad you're finding the reading interesting Sharon, and I'll add Life of Chuck to my list!
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
I wrote a short story titled “What’s in a name?” for a workshop last year. Sadly, nobody got the Shakespeare reference…
Thank you for these weekly posts, Ellie.
So far I had no problems with the names or keeping track of the characters. But at times it seems like the text was intentionally difficult, as if Pirandello wanted the readers to put in some effort to understand what he was saying. Or it could be the translation.
The original text is just as difficult to read, it's both outdated and deliberately uses obscure terms. In that sense, the translation is pretty accurate. But let me know if there's any passages you find particularly hard! And aw, I can't resist a good Shakespeare quote either.
Thank you for the article, Ellie! It's fascinating. I'm reading the book slowly but with great pleasure, noting down ideas as I progress. In this section, the arguments intensify dramatically, and though Pirandello writes with humor and occasional absurdity, his points are truly unsettling. Everything rests on illusion—the illusion of reality and social contracts—along with our fundamental inability to understand how we appear to others. Rather than driving people mad, I think this realization leads to apathy and depression, followed by acceptance. We simply continue living within the illusion, ignoring it until the next wave of apathy strikes.
The motif about one's own voice is particularly intriguing. In Pirandello's era, recording and listening to your voice was as rare and expensive as taking photos and videos of yourself. Yet hearing one's recorded voice remains an unsettling experience—it always sounds foreign, requiring time to accept it as our own.
Now I reflect on how people had it simpler then, rarely having to confront their other selves.
And I found the Hoffman interview excerpt compelling. I'm planning to watch Tootsie—it's fascinating that Hoffman didn't consider it a comedy. I'm eager to view his female transformation through this perspective and through Pirandello's ideas
I've been also thinking about the "normal" reactions people have to existential questions, I feel like apathy/grief/acceptance is not necessarily the most common one? Maybe I don't have much faith in humanity, to me most people just ignore these questions on purpose or out of stupidity. And when they do tackle them, they avoid thinking about it too much—otherwise we'd have many more Moscardas on our hands.