I understand the concern with finding a correct translation of Senilità, but I do not share the opinion that it is a huge problem that the Beryl de Zoete version is translated a bit more "freely." I am writing this after having studied Svevo in the United States and in Italy and having read it in Italian at least three times and in the de Zoete translation twice. This may not make me more of an authority but hopefully will temper the following comments:

Essentially, the problem with translating Italo Svevo's work (if it is a problem) is that it was already been translated once from Austrian German thoughts (Svevo was born Hector Schmitz in Trieste, an Austro-Hungarian port city) into Italian. When you read Senilità (or its forerunner, Una vita - which is painful to read) you get an idea of how hypercorrect Svevo's writing was. This was not by accident, but rather through his desire to write perfectly in Italian. While this makes it an exceptionally easy read in Italian, if you translated it too closely, it would read more like Hemingway than anything else. In translations, I like the de Zoete translation (Bantam Modern Classics) because it is a little more fluid.

On to the merits of the book, whatever the translation or title, it is a masterpiece of Italian decadentism. The protagonist, Emilio Brentani is the last member of a dying family who must find a way to keep it going. He is getting on in years (which I guess early in the 20th century was mid-30s) and this is his last opportunity to do it. The book traces his battle with Angiolina, who is more element of nature than human, and the story takes him through a vortice vitale (the vortex of his life) into old age.

He carries out this battle against the background of caring for his sick sister Amalia and taking lessons from his libertine friend and sculptor Stefano Balli as they walk along behind the dog catcher. The time frame is Carnevale, the period before la Quaresima (Lent). The basic story is of his farewell to meat (so to speak) before the long fast that concludes his life.

I think this book makes a great introduction to Svevo and the svevian concept of "inept" man, and it is more focused than La coscienza di Zeno. I give it the thumbs-up.

Readers should be aware that this translation, by Beryl de Zoete, is much older, freer, and less accurate than the newer one, published by Yale Nota Bene, translated by Beth Archer Brombert as "Emilio's Carnival." Don't be fooled by the classy NYRB edition; the usually impeccable editors of that series have passed this "vintage" translation into print with nary a warning. Of course, older translations may be your thing (they're certainly mine much of the time) but you should know that this edition isn't all it seems. For more information on de Zoete as a translator, see William Weaver's excellent introduction to his wonderful translation of "Zeno's Conscience," which nicely dispatches de Zoete's "The Confessions of Zeno" to the dustheap of translation history.

Pointing to the major themes that are present in his masterpiece of a novel The Horned Man, these stories capture an array of seemingly normal people who become possessed by urges, compulsions, life forces, unsavory spirits, and uncanny inclinations that defy their quest for a decent life. Lasdun's stories skewer the notion of free will and seem to say that attempts to defy our destiny, our true urges, will only make those urges stronger. Thus the theme of repression and its discontents runs through all these stories, which are magical, plot-driven and told with poetic acuteness. If you like to read about characters consumed by obsessions as they face the consequences of their repression, you will like this sterling collection.

In the forest of contemporary poetry most of what grows seems to obstruct passage, kill the view, and generally make the world darker. You need a machete, or better yet a chainsaw, just to cut through to sunlight. Very occasionally, however, one stumbles across a clearing, and Lasdun's "Landscape with Chainsaw" is such an occasion. This poet's wit and mastery of language make him a true pleasure to read, but they alone are not what make this book important. According to his bio notes, Lasdun grew up in England and now lives in upstake New York, in the Catskills. Now I'm no special fan of the brits, but this is the rare case of a writer who, coming to America, ends up telling us things about ourselves we are either too close or desensitized to know. Lasdun is tuned in to history, to literature, to his neighbors, to himself and to the land. Both literally and figuratively these poems are about landing in a foreign landscape and cutting into it, again, (after first overcoming a sense of presumption and squeamish prejudice against doing so) in order simply to be able to park oneself there, to infuse it with personal meaning, to make it "home." This collection has a thrilling thematic coherence; the poems gain in power and seem to be speaking to one another as you read on. Get your hands on this book. At the very least it's a sound financial investment: twenty years from now it will be as valuable as, say, a first edition of Robert Lowell's "Life Studies."

We just returned from a trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we took one of the walks, actually we took 1/2 of one of the walks. We planned to walk from Montepulcina to Pienza stopping at Montechelli for lunch. The book said it was 3 1/2 miles to Montechelli and another 3 1/2 miles to Pienza. It took us 4 hours to walk to Montechell. The walk was beautiful and the directions exact. There were four of us all in good shape but the walk was more exhausting than we expected, given the discription in the book. We knew we could not continue on to Pienza. Montechelli is tiny pristine town without public transportation, but with wonderful people, one of whom gave us a ride back to Montepulcina. I would recomend this book for anyone interested in walking in the area but my experience is to double the amount of time they expect the walks to take .

I was inspired by this guidebook to do 4 days of walks in Tuscany this spring -- from Buonconvento to Montalcino, Sant'Antimo via Ripa D'Orcia to Bagno Vignoni, and on to Pienza. I had previously done the Montepulciano-Pienza walk. Every walk I took was wonderful and I can't recommend this way of seeing Italy highly enough! There is no way I could have done these walks without this book, which I found to be very accurate. There were a few places where I had minor trouble interpreting the directions, but was never really lost, and I found the maps very helpful. Proprieters of the places I stayed or stopped for a meal were sometimes amused, but always pleased, when they heard I was on foot. I also had the Lonely Planet guidebook to walking/hiking in Italy, but found that to be much less helpful and less detailed. It was clear to me that Lasdun and Davis had done painstakingly thorough background research. (i.e., had walked every trail more than once, and had tried every restaurant -- obviously a great hardship, especially in the spring and fall!) It will take me years to do all the walks in this book that call out to me, but I'm already thinking of my next trip (in grape harvest season this time).

I bought this book before a recent trip to Italy. We stayed in a town described in the book and did one of the walks. Wonderful scenery and we thoroughly enjoyed the walk, and the excellent lunch at the restaurant recommended. We thought the book extremely useful and very well researched, and hope to use it to plan more walks next year. - Duncan Naylor and John Cowell

A collection of stories that we grew up hearing, but with all new skin. These re-tellings give new blood to Ovid and infuse his timeless book with modern spirit. Give: Apollo and Daphne packs a punch with its Elivs-like god and neo-feminist victim. A bevy of talented writers prove that familiar plots do not have to retain their old luster but can be polished anew. After Ovid is a wonderful way to loose yourself in imagination as you see the familiar become at once perverse and natal and finally familiar again.

I rate this book a "two" instead of "one" because of the prose (good quality for a more literary-type novel, though not outstanding) and the character development afforded the main character, Lawrence Miller. Alas, no other characters are afforded much character development, a common plight in first-person narratives.

I must agree with another reviewer: this book was a waste of several hours. Rather than being a page-turner, at a few points I was sorely tempted to put the book down and never pick it back up, but the mysterious plot promised such a resolution that I grimly pressed on.

Imagine my disappointment when the promised resolution fizzled out to a nothingness which still somehow managed to strain the few stringy lines of credibility left. All that remained of the story for me, in the book's aftertaste, was a disjointed series of psychological disturbances huddled in the brain of the main character.

Lawrence is written as a highly credible character, a feat worth mentioning since little else in the book seems to be realistic. There are many references to him hiding things from himself. He hides an important phone bill underneath some disks on his bedside table. He somehow has misplaced his relationship with his own mother to the point that he no longer knows her address, but he doesn't remember how this came about. A professional therapist continuously presses him to tell her if he is sexually attracted to her. (If you know anything about the profession, you would know a real professional in the therapy field would very rarely utter anything similar to this.) A rank-smelling man camps out in Lawrence's office at the college, in a hiding place of which Lawrence is well aware, and what action does Lawrence (that reasonable, credible man) take? Does he rip open the hiding place and confront the man? Does he wait behind the door until the man comes in to slip into the hiding place, and then confront him? No! He hangs out in his office, thinking, reading, working in full view of the hiding place, and then, even better -- during his off-hours he wildly roams New York City trying to find clues about the fellow's existence and where he could possibly be. When a woman at the college expresses strong romantic interest in him and he later finds out she is in possession of a letter to her allegedly written by him, a letter which at one point is in the same room with him, does he utter the fact that he has not written her a letter? No! Although he feels no attraction to her and several times refers to her dumpy appearance, he goes about acting as though he did.

I DID like the main character's few ruminations on his wife (now separated), Carol. More would have been nice.

I don't want to spoil the ending (as if I could), but in the end nothing is explained except that some people unexpectedly have it in for Lawrence, and something highly implausible grows out of one of Lawrence's bodily appendages.

A disappointing piece of tight, implausible madness.

Lawrence Miller, college professor, recently separated from his wife Carol, member of the Sexual Harrassment Committee, is an intelligent and thoughtful man, a man who is seeing a psychoanalyst, controlled, polite, not given to extremes of behavior; not that is, until the events described in this book, and the ensuing disintegration of his quiet and controlled life.

The story can be taken in many ways. Is Miller really at the focal point of a malign conspiracy? Or is he slowly going psychotic? The author circles around his characters and situations, peeling away layer after layer, revealing unsuspected depths of misery. Miller is more than a college professor going through a bad patch; he is a strangely oblivious man, a man who misunderstands social cues in a radical and frightening way, a man who seems oblivious to the wreckage he creates in those who try to relate to him. But is he more than this, maybe even a killer? Well, let the reader decide.

Author James Lasdun is a master of surrealistic prose, written in a disarmingly lucid and simple way. You think he is telling a simple story, then you find yourself confused, perplexed and horrified. What is really going on? The writing is beautiful, laden with symbolism and poetic nuance. The book is not for everyone but I found it well done and well worth reading.

The Horned Man is an extraordinary creation. Intelligent, surprsing, riveting, with a mastery of language and mood such as I have not encountered in a very long while. Think the intelligence of Henry James, the economy of Raymond Carver, and the storytelling of James M. Cain, and you'll have an idea of how good (and original) this novel is. I found myself re-reading the book the day after I had finished it, an extremely rare occurence. This is because author James Lasdun's tale can be understood in several ways. The Horned Man is a work of literature that is also thrilling to read.