Love in Vain: Selected Stories

by Minna Proctor, Federigo Tozzi, Minna Proctor (Translator)

Overview

Love in Vain: Selected Stories of Federigo Tozzi is the debut short-story collection in English of one of Italy's most distinguished early modern writers. The twenty stories of Love in Vain were selected and translated by Minna Proctor, who received the 1998 PEN/Renato Poggioli Award for her then unpublished renderings of Tozzi's fiction. "The investigation of naturalism, of truth," writes Proctor in her biographical introduction, "defined Tozzi's poetics. Impassioned by literature, yet isolated from the mainstream, Tozzi found nothing so fascinating as the unfettered expression of the inner lives of normal people." His work is at once a mixture of subtlety and melodrama, of psychological perception, primitive emotion, and raw physical need, as his plain subjects, yearning for connection and love, forever grasp at the unattainable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811214711
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	05/17/2001
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

The author of Do You Hear What I Hear? Religious Calling, the Priesthood, and My Father, and the editor of The Literary Review, Minna Proctor won the PEN/Renato Poggioli Award for her translation of Federigo Tozzi’s Love in Vain.

The author of Do You Hear What I Hear? Religious Calling, the Priesthood, and My Father, and the editor of The Literary Review, Minna Proctor won the PEN/Renato Poggioli Award for her translation of Federigo Tozzi’s Love in Vain.

Table of Contents

	Federigo Tozzi	vii
	Love in Vain	1
	Assunta	14
	First Love	32
	Mad for Music	39
	Sister	46
	L'Amore	51
	The Boardinghouse	57
	The Tavern	66
	House for Sale	76
	The Crucifix	85
	Poverty	91
	Dead Man in the Oven	99
	Life	106
	Vile Creatures	114
	The Idiot	123
	To Dream of Death	132
	The Lovers	137
	One Evening, on the Banks of the Tiber	143
	The Miracle	150
	The Clocks	157

Editorial Reviews

"Federigo Tozzi's beautiful, strange love stories hover at the abyss, where reason meets unreason and loses. Tozzi must be the poet of abjection, a poet of the unconscious. His perplexing tales reflect on self-conscious characters caught in love's, and their own, absurdly needy net. They comment, too, on the moment when ideas were changing, sensibilities shifting, and his characters move, resistant and confused, from the Victorian into the modern. Translator Minna Proctor has done a wonderful job of realizing these startling stories in English and bringing them to us for the first time."

Lynne Tillman

"Ardent, impetuous, crackling with nerve-energies, Federigo Tozzi insists on his uniqueness. Minna Proctor has brought this full-throttle sensibility into English without a flinch or a fidget."

Sven Birkerts

"Federigo Tozzi, Italy's forgotten master of the short story, is a real discovery. I was delighted by the compassion and insight of Love in Vain, by its unflinching and subtle dissection of humankind's most private moments. How can such a powerful writer have slipped through the net and for so long? Now, thanks to Minna Proctor's elegant and equally subtle translations, it is unlikely that Tozzi will be forgotten again."

Jim Crace

[A]n almost Chekhovian delicacy.
—Context

James Crossley

Nervy, sexy stories from a rediscovered Italian master...[Tozzi's] lovers love so hard it hurts.

Salon.com

[A]n almost Chekhovian delicacy.
—Context

PEN award-winner Minna Proctor translated the 20 pieces by prolific Italian realist Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920) that make up Love in Vain: Selected Stories, in which the young characters' search for the romantic ideal often leads only to misery. Jealousy, obsession and betrayal are brought to the fore in these stories of smalltown lovers driven by their passions, trying desperately to connect usually without success. "What good does love do me?" one anguished character asks. Through the arranged marriages, secret trysts and unfulfilled desires, disappointment and frustration are never far off. (May 24) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A first English-language collection of 20 stories by an almost forgotten Italian writer (1883—1920), malcontent, fervent socialist, and effervescent romantic libertine. Translator Proctor's illuminating introduction recounts the known facts of Tozzi's checkered literary and sexual adventures, and links his "provincial realism" convincingly with the work of his contemporaries Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello and also (an obvious influence) Sicily's Giovanni Verga. The stories themselves—simultaneously anecdotal, earthy, and psychologically astute—include such gems as two knowing depictions (in "First Love" and "The Lovers," respectively) of the intricacies and absurdities of both adolescent and adult passion; a compact rustic tragedy precipitated by jealousy ("Assunta"); tales of marital mistrust, violence, and vengeance ("L'Amore," "Poverty") that might have come out of Boccaccio's Decameron; and a masterly study of obsession ("The Clocks"). Best of all perhaps is "The Idiot": here, the mind and heart of the emotionally helpless man-child Fiocco are portrayed with remarkable ingenuity—and compassion. A first-class introduction to a wonderful writer.

Kirkus Reviews