Zeno’s Conscience.

Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience, listed in the Bloomsbury 100 and in the honorable mentions in the Novel 100, was Svevo’s third and last novel, published shortly before his death in a car accident and resulting from a lengthy professional relationship with James Joyce.

Zeno’s Conscience, previously translated as The Confessions of Zeno, is a modernist comedy, narrated by the neurotic, duplicitous Zeno, looking back on his life and his marriage, his affair with a young singer, his business partnership with his brother-in-law, and his interminable attempts to quit smoking. Zeno’s analyst has asked him to write down his “confessions” as part of his therapy, and the short introductory note from “Dr. S” says that the therapist is publishing them as a sort of revenge against his former patient, who has revealed that not everything he wrote therein is true. Because the story is told from Zeno’s perspective, it’s full of amusing rationalizations and subtle attempts to shift blame on to the people around him.

Zeno’s antics and his descriptions of them are amusing for about 300 pages, but halfway through the book’s longest section, the description of his partnership with brother-in-law Guido, the narrative begins to drag, and the fact that that story offers a distinct conclusion doesn’t help the fact that the path there was aimless. Guido is, himself, a fraud, but I could never be sure how much of Zeno’s written treatment of him was real and how much was projection. The strongest section is the story of Zeno’s courtship of the beautiful Ada, who spurns him for Guido, and how he seems to enjoy watching Ada deteriorate physically in middle age.

If this seems like a more indifferent review than I normally give, it reflects my uncertainty over whether or not I liked the book. I tore through the first three-fourths of it, then stumbled to the finish line as I lost interest. The introduction labels the book as a commentary on the idle rich of pre-War Trieste, which may be true but might be too far removed from us to have as much impact as, say, Fitzgerald’s portraits of the idle rich in America in his books.

Next up: I’ve just finished the last book of A Dance to the Music of Time, and will post my thoughts on the whole twelve-volume series shortly.