Praise
A revelation, a jolly existentialist nightmare, a comic freakout of the highest order. Pirandello knew what fools we are to believe in our individual, immutable identities, and through the travails of a certain Signor Maggot, he depicted with exacting zest the cost of that knowledge. Sean Wilsey’s sharp translation delivers Pirandello’s scary, hilarious delights with a remarkable touch.
— Sam Lipsyte
Three writers of the twentieth century have given voice to—and leant their names to—our disquiet, our injuries, and our fear; at the same time, through the catharsis or measure of contemplation, which are among the revelations of art, they have helped us to live by tempering our anxiety and desperation; and I am using this term, tempering, in a musical sense...of striking a more pure, more crystalline, more vibrant note. These three writers are Pirandello, Kafka, and Borges.
— Leonardo Sciascia
The quality of One, None, and a Hundred Grand as a philosophical novel through and through is striking from the first page to the last . . . marvelously thought-provoking.
— Edith LaGraziana
Pirandello’s (1867-1936) 1926 novel . . . synthesizes the themes and personalities that illuminate such dramas as Six Characters in Search of an Author. Vitangelo Moscarda "loses his reality" when his wife cavalierly informs him that his nose tilts to the right; suddenly he realizes that . . . his identity is evanescent, based purely on the shifting perceptions of those around him. Thus he is simultaneously without a self—'no one’—and the theater for myriad selves—'one hundred thousand.’ In a crazed search for an identity independent of others' preconceptions, Moscarda careens from one disaster to the next and finds his freedom even as he is declared insane. It is Pirandello's genius that a discussion of the fundamental human inability to communicate, of our essential solitariness, and of the inescapable restriction of our free will elicits such thoroughly sustained and earthy laughter.
— Publishers Weekly
One, None, and a Hundred Grand . . . is a welcome and entertaining introduction to Pirandello’s work. The novel tells about the unraveling of the life of its protagonist, the wealthy, idle, twenty-eight-year-old Vitangelo Moscarda . . . The language with which Moscarda expresses and explores his views is a pleasurable amalgamation of philosophy and poetry . . . To liberate himself, Moscarda must destroy this legacy, which he does publicly, and spectacularly. Following along as he does so is deeply satisfying, though unsettling.
— Rachel Nevins, Necessary Fiction
The narrative is presented as a dialogue of sorts with an audience, the protagonist anticipating objections, inviting attention to certain observations and considerations. Pirandello was a prolific playwright, and this interactive form of monologue reflects that. But this is an intense and deeply internal journey, one that, once in motion, the narrator is unable or unwilling to halt—even as he is aware of the self-destructive nature of his actions.
— Joseph Schreiber
In 1924, [Pirandello] wrote the novel One, None and a Hundred Grand, his strongest statement on systematic mutual incomprehension and the desire to subtract oneself from other people’s controlling narratives.
— Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books
One, None, and a Hundred Grand is a funny, beautiful, sad, anxiously precise book about a guy who wants to know if he’s really him. And don’t we all want to know if we are, indeed, ourselves? Reading this book gives me the same feeling as hearing what my own voice really sounds like—and worse, when I’m caught talking to myself. Pirandello carefully constructs the shape of obsessive thinking in the mind of Vitangelo. It’s a masterpiece about the dangers of interiority. It reminds the reader there’s always at least a little bit of yourself you can’t see.
— Nathan Dragon
What begins for Vitangelo Maggot as a horrible realization—how we perceive ourselves is not how others perceive us!—unspools the precarious threadwork of the self, resulting in existential tantrums and high, madcap drama. Luigi Pirandello is nowhere near as scary as Beckett, but much funnier than Hegel. Sean Wilsey's eye for aphorism and humor makes this novel instantly shareable amongst friends and loners.
— Spencer Ruchti, Third Place Books
Pirandello's novel is among the world's quintessential novels on the question of identity. Wilsey's stunning translation captures its antic energy and its anguish. Fresh, fast, and very funny, it is immensely readable from start to finish. A translation as original and bracing as Pirandello's pages.
— Jhumpa Lahiri