...As for plot, there is one which sounds absurd when recounted for bare details, but, as Pirandello points out in his new preface, life is absurd. He adds, "Life, despite its brazen absurdities, little and big, has the invaluable privilege of dispensing with that idiotic verisimilitude to which Art believes itself in duty bound to defer." Yet this story of a man who dies twice and yet lives, old in a vivacious style that never appears quite serious, seems to be truth, for the underlying idea is true, just as Mattia Pascal seems a real person, for he feels, thinks and acts according to the ways of human beings.
--Literary Digest International Book Review, Volume 1
