I know Pirandello is supposed to be a classic Italian writer. But I found his stories elliptical, wildly varying in tone and sometimes hard to understand. A subtle misogyny runs through many of them, with male characters expounding on the flaws of the distaff gender in general and their women in particular.
Above all, you get the sense of how abruptly life can throw you off the rails: one character wakes disoriented, with clothes he’s certain aren’t his, until he’s ushered into a wealthy mansion—only to find the same house dusty, dirty and abandoned the next morning; a young boy gets into a dirt fight with another boy, the altercation elevating to a shockingly horrific fatal ending; a man remembers a meeting with the lovely, young Anna Wheil and speaks to her youthful self even as he learns that she died shortly before their final meeting; a town’s inhabitants aren’t certain whether a prominent man or his mother-in-law is the crazy one; etc.
In the prologue, it is stated that Pirandello’s characters often talk as if they’re in a trance and there’s certainly a lot of verbosity in many of the stories. Some characters ramble on in a way that hints of deep self-absorption even as they demand that their audience listen to them.
Whether funny, maudlin or tragic, Pirandello’s tales are tricky ciphers and not necessarily easy reading.