Like many that have come before it, this collection speaks of the everyman, who, in Manganelli’s opinion, takes life far too seriously. For him, per vivere e godersi la vita romantica is to live without complication, with decisiveness, patience, and a gray linen suit.
With an earnest mind and clever hand, Manganelli makes light of the everyman’s plight, which is nothing more than to make it through life unscathed. Like his fellow Italian avant-gardist Italo Calvino, Manganelli writes of a reality where self-pity gets a man nowhere and self-love permits him a solitary contentment.
Manganelli limits each story to only one full typewriter page’s worth of text, thus eliminating the empty space that occupies most novels. This purges the stories of dialogue and restricts the number of characters to no more than three. The remaining actions only become more meaningful as a result. Mangenelli limits life to a series of habits, but replaces the nihilistic rationale with a moral direction guided by humanity instead of religion.
With the Borgesian belief that reality is nothing short of fantastical, Manganelli’s brief biographies are truly magical; he makes death superficial and love honest. The debate still stands of which rules his psyche, imagination or real life. But who's to say that there's a difference between the two?
