The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Her Husband by Luigi Pirandello. Trans. Martha King and Mary Ann Frese Witt
Alan Tinkler

Luigi Pirandello. Her Husband. Trans. Martha King and Mary Ann Frese Witt. Duke Univ. Press, 2000. 242 pp. $24.95.

Before writing his award-winning plays, Luigi Pirandello began his career writing fiction. His fifth novel, Her Husband, written in 1908 and published in 1911, is both a behind-the-scenes satirical scrutiny of Continental theater and a quasi-roman à clef based on the Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda and her husband Palmiro Madesani. As the title suggests, the playwright’s husband, Giustino Boggiolo, exists as the satire’s focal point. Boggiolo shows no interest in his wife’s writing until she receives payment for some. Once Boggiolo realizes that her writing has moneymaking potential, he becomes an ardent supporter and marketer of his wife’s works, though he is oblivious to its aesthetic merit. Boggiolo even becomes giddy when he hears from an American critic that American writers are paid by the word. Boggiolo, not surprisingly, longs for Italy to adopt such a sensible system of remuneration. At one point, he even wonders whether some errant scribbling on a torn sheet of paper can be sold. Even though the critics and journalists laugh at Boggiolo for his ardent buffoonery, the satire aligns them with Boggiolo, as the critics are finally less concerned with aesthetic value than with maintaining their respective positions of critical influence, their respective coteries. As the satire exposes the pretentiousness and materialism of the Roman literati, it portrays the effect of the bedlam on the creative prowess of writers exposed to such ineptitude; Silvia becomes unable to write as Boggiolo institutes promotional paraphernalia, including a weekly salon: “Literary Mondays at Villa Silvia.” Like many of his other prose pieces, Pirandello’s Her Husband provides a clear antecedent for his plays, including his enormously influential Six Characters in Search of an Author. This successful translation provides English readers access to a compelling work from one of the masters of twentieth-century literature. [Alan Tinkler]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Her Husband by Luigi Pirandello. Trans. Martha King and Mary Ann Frese Witt Alan Tinkler Luigi Pirandello. Her Husband. Trans. Martha King and Mary Ann Frese Witt. Duke Univ. Press, 2000. 242 pp. $24.95. Before writing his award-winning plays, Luigi Pirandello began his career writing fiction. His fifth novel, Her Husband, written in 1908 and published in 1911, is both a behind-the-scenes satirical scrutiny of Continental theater and a quasi-roman à clef based on the Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda and her husband Palmiro Madesani. As the title suggests, the playwright’s husband, Giustino Boggiolo, exists as the satire’s focal point. Boggiolo shows no interest in his wife’s writing until she receives payment for some. Once Boggiolo realizes that her writing has moneymaking potential, he becomes an ardent supporter and marketer of his wife’s works, though he is oblivious to its aesthetic merit. Boggiolo even becomes giddy when he hears from an American critic that American writers are paid by the word. Boggiolo, not surprisingly, longs for Italy to adopt such a sensible system of remuneration. At one point, he even wonders whether some errant scribbling on a torn sheet of paper can be sold. Even though the critics and journalists laugh at Boggiolo for his ardent buffoonery, the satire aligns them with Boggiolo, as the critics are finally less concerned with aesthetic value than with maintaining their respective positions of critical influence, their respective coteries. As the satire exposes the pretentiousness and materialism of the Roman literati, it portrays the effect of the bedlam on the creative prowess of writers exposed to such ineptitude; Silvia becomes unable to write as Boggiolo institutes promotional paraphernalia, including a weekly salon: “Literary Mondays at Villa Silvia.” Like many of his other prose pieces, Pirandello’s Her Husband provides a clear antecedent for his plays, including his enormously influential Six Characters in Search of an Author. This successful translation provides English readers access to a compelling work from one of the masters of twentieth-century literature. [Alan Tinkler]

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