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The Nice Old Man And The Pretty Girl (1926)

by Italo Svevo(Favorite Author)

3.12 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1933633891 (ISBN13: 9781933633893)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Melville House

review 1: Ah. Ah. The characteristic mild mix of pathos, ironic humour and profundity that permeates all of Svevo's work. An old man (about my age) falls in... love? lust? with a beautiful young woman as she drives her trolley (what we in Melbourne might call a tram) in Trieste at the start of the Great War. Well, we've all been there (I certainly have), falling in love, I mean, with a lovely, clean (she bathes once a day) young woman, inappropriately. She comes around to see (euphemism) him at his insistence a few times, and he gives her some money, but he decides to slow it down for it seems his conscience is troubling him. Then he has a severe angina attack (we've all been there - I certainly have) which makes him reflect on both his mortality and then further on the morality of... more what they have been doing. He decides to write something to instruct her (as well as continue to send her money) - but this turns into a larger work on the morality of the responsibilities of age. What does youth owe to old age, and how should old people instruct young people; those who, although they are incapable of understanding this, will become old and near death one day themselves. As his heart keeps giving out (not a metaphor) he tries to prepare this treatise for publication, hoping that will explain the moral dilemma to the world, but his doctor, who listens to his arguments, is not impressed...What is to become of this quandary, what will his treatise achieve? As he admits on his last written pages: Nothing, nothing, nothing. ~~~This is stylistically not his best work by a considerable margin, the story doesn't flow quite perfectly, but Svevo nevertheless skewers the guilt and regret of men as they age, as he did so remarkably in Zeno's Conscience and particularly As A Man Grows Older. And I am currently experiencing it.The term "tragico-comic" could have created just for Svevo. Or for me.
review 2: Svevo is mostly known for his work "Zeno's Conscience," which delved into the psychoanalysis of the title character and the inner workings and often-contradictory thoughts of his mind. Like "Zeno" the story in "The Nice Old Man" focuses on the fervid and often comical thoughts of the Old Man as he enters into an affair with a young girl during WWI. The Old Man uses his money and influence to seduce the woman who uses him in turn. But he becomes obsessed with the morality of his actions and struggles with his sinful ways. Svevo artfully and sparingly portrays the Old Man's troubled thoughts, and the result is a portrait of a man consumed by his own machinations.Overall the novella is wry and amusing. I found Svevo's similar comedic tone in Zeno to be a bit tiresome, but it works in the shorter form here.As an aside, I love this series of novellas. Good quick reads and an eclectic catelogue. less

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