PONTIGGIA, Giuseppe 1934-

PERSONAL: Born September 25, 1934, in Erba, Italy; married Lucia Magnocavallo, 1963; children: Andrea. Education: Graduated from Catholic University of Milan, 1959.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Mondadori, Via Mondadori, 20090 Segrate, Milan, Italy.

CAREER: Novelist and translator. Worked in a bank while attending college. Taught Italian language and literature for twenty years.

AWARDS, HONORS: Premio Selezione Campiello, 1978, for Il giocatore invisible; Premio Strega, 1989, for La grande sera.

WRITINGS:

fiction

La morte in banca: Cinque racconti e un romanzo breve, Rusconi e Paolazzi (Milan, Italy), 1959, enlarged as La morte in banca: Un romanzo breve e undici racconti, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1979, enlarged as La morte in banca: un romanzo breve e sedici racconti, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1991.

L'arte della fuga (title means "The Art of Fleeing"), Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 1968.

Il giocatore invisibile: romanzo, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1978, translation by Annapaola Cancogni published as The Invisible Player, Eridanos Press (Hygiene, CO), 1988.

Chichita la scimmia parlante, Lisciani & Zampetti (Teramo, Italy), 1979.

Il raggio d'ombra, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1983.

La grande sera, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1989, translation by Sacha Reabinovitch published as The Big Night, Halban (London, England), 1991.

Le sabbie immobili, Mulino (Bologna, Italy), 1991.

Vite di uomini non illustri, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1993.

L'isola volante (title means "The Flying Island"), Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1996.

other

(With Marco Forti) Almanacco dello specchio, n. 2-1973, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1973.

(Editor) Leonardo Snisgalli, L'ellisse: poesie 1932-1972, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1974.

Il giardino delle Esperidi, Adelphi (Milan, Italy), 1984.

(Translator, with Leo Lionni) Decimus Magnus Ausonius, La Mosella, Verba (Italy), 1984.

(Editor, with Guido Bezzola) Manzoni europeo, Cassa di Resparmio delle Provincie Lombarde (Milan, Italy), 1985.

(With Roberto Fedi) Le Donne, i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori: viaggio per viali e sentieri della letteratura italiana percorsi e ripercorsi a suo tempo fino agli esami e lungo i quali la memoria nostalgica e un po'ironica ama riandare, Mursia (Milan, Italy), 1986.

(With Franco Della Peruta) Il tramanto di un regno: il Lombardo-Veneto dalla restaurazione al risorgimento, 1814-1859, Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde (Milan, Italy), 1988.

(Translator, with Maria Corti) Bonvesin da la Riva, De magnalibus Mediolani = Le meraviglie di Milano, Bompiani (Milan, Italy), 1974.

(With Achille Bonito Oliva and Alberto Vacca) Radici (exhibition catalogue), Prearo (Milan, Italy), 1991.

(With Giovanni Francesio) L'offıcina del racconto, conversazioni con Giuseppe Pontiggia, Paola Capriolo, Michele mari, Aurelio Picca, Vincenzo Pardini, Nico Orengo, Carlo Fruttero, Andrea De Carlo, Vincenzo Cerami, Luca Doninelli, Nuova Compagnia Editrice (Forlì, Italy), 1996.

(Editor, with Marco Manzoni) I Volti di Hermann Hesse: atti del Convegno, Milano 27 marzo 1992, Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1993.

I contemporanei del futuro, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1998.

(Translator, with Alberto Cavaglion) Isaac Bashevis Singer, Racconti, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 1998.

(With Daniela Marcheschi) Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Guicciardini, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato (Rome, Italy), 1999.

Nati due volte: romanzo, Mondadori (Milan, Italy), 2000.

Edited Carlo Collodi's I racconti delle fate (title means "Fairy Tales").

Contributor to Corriere della Sera.

Works have been translated into French, Spanish, English, and Czech.

SIDELIGHTS: Italian novelist Giuseppe Pontiggia stands out among his contemporaries for having followed his own distinctive literary style during a period dominated by Neorealism. Influenced by French writer René Daumal, Pontiggia has crafted novels that address existential questions and point out destructive human behavior. In an essay for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Daniela Marcheschi commented, "Pontiggia believes that the quest for truth sustains literature." She also described him as an exceptional writer: "He has shown the ability to reach a balance between fresh creativity and intellectual depth, between irony and emotion, humor and sadness, elegant prose and wealth of meanings. . . . Pontiggia has given his readers a significant picture of Italian society in the twentieth century." One of the author's best-known works is Il giocatore invisible, in which he uses the psychological thriller format to show that ethics are an essential base for intellectual endeavors. A former teacher of language and literature, Pontiggia has published numerous other books, including translations of works by other writers.

Pontiggia's childhood growing up outside of Como, Italy was punctuated by tragedy. In 1943 his father was murdered amidst civic unrest. After the family moved to Milan, his sister committed suicide. Pontiggia earned a degree from the Catholic University of Milan and wrote a thesis on the work of Italo Svevo. His interest in literature was shared by his brother Giampiero, who became a poet writing under the name Giampero Neri.

Having worked at a bank while attending university, Pontiggia used the experience as a basis for his first novel, which was originally collected with short stories as La morte in banca: Cinque racconti e un romanzo breve. The novel's eighteen-year-old protagonist Carabba is dramatically changed by his time spent working in a bank, where he loses his optimistic outlook under the influence of his aggressive, hate-filled coworkers and the office's mechanized routine. Pontiggia repeatedly and sometimes explicitly presents Carabba as an element in a chess game, an analogy he uses again in other works. This game ends with Carraba's maturation or psychological death and rebirth. The story allows Pontiggia to develop themes including the negative, violent effects of industrialization and the importance of facing reality and accepting life as a mystery.

In a review for World Literature Today, Cecilia Ross called La morte in banca "a fine psychological study" in which "the reader looks at the struggle through a fine mesh; the talented narrator brings out only the high points." The accompanying six short stories in the enlarged 1979 edition earned even higher praise. Ross said that they "reveal the pen of a writer of distinction." Her brief appraisal noted that they use "few paragraphs, occasionally 'brusque' syntax, masterly dialogue, fast action."

In L'arte della fuga Pontiggia experimented with a mostly plotless fictional account focusing on violent crime. The avant-garde work is heavy with symbolism. It features two contrasting central characters, a dogmatic clerk and a writer of cultural criticism. Numerous murders and flights take place, with the clerk and writer interacting with many, often anonymous, figures. According to Marcheschi, the book reflects social pressures to "collectivize" the individual and reveals that "any effort to eschew individual destiny . . . is not only vain but also tragic and absurd because it has to end inevitably in death." Marcheschi described the work as one of Pontiggia's most successful books, but also as having been critically ignored until some twenty years after its publication.

While Il giocatore invisible treats many of the same issues found in L'arte della fuga, Pontiggia adopted a more conventional format for this novel. It is a psychological thriller that Marcheschi likened to the work of Carlo Emilio Gadda. Marcheschi judged that in this novel, "seeking a middle road between simplicity and complexity, between clarity and enigma," Pontiggia "lays bare the mediocrity and pettiness of his characters who speak hypocritically of truth and sincerity even though they are contradicted at every turn by events around them." The story begins with the central figure, a nameless college professor, being criticized in a professional journal for his assertion that he can confirm the origins of the word "hypocrite." The professor sets out to find this anonymous writer, who shows a real hatred for him. In the process, he begins to look at his wife, his lover, and his colleagues in a new and often unflattering light. When he eventually uncovers the identity of the critic, it has little importance compared to his growing personal problems, which are fueled by his being deceived and deceiving.

The novel's translation as The Invisible Player by Annapaola Cancogni was Pontiggia's U.S. debut. Reviews of this version stressed its intellectual qualities and sometimes presented it as difficult to read. A Publishers Weekly critic noted that the professor's search is "tediously protracted" and that "readers will find it difficult to muster empathy for him." While the reviewer enjoyed the satirical treatment of academic characters, the novel remains "an earnest performance rather than an enthralling story." A writer for Kirkus Reviews was amused by The Invisible Player but advised that it is best suited to "an erudite audience." The reviewer said that the plot "seems more like an elaborate joke stretched into a novel . . . than like a credible story, but satirical set-pieces and the development of a psychological love-triangle save it." Lois E. Nesbit reviewed the novel for American Book Review, where she described it as an imperfect but still rewarding book. "It is Pontiggia's gift for creating and portraying these idiosyncratic figures with humor and poignancy that saves this book, with its familiar theme and unambitious form, from ordinariness," Nesbit commented. In particular, she admired Pontiggia's dialogue, which she said is "deftly rendered and matches the novel's thesis that all language is lies and deception."

An actual 1927 incident involving the escape of a political prisoner provided the basis for Pontiggia's novel Il raggio d'ombra. A doctor without strong political interests is persuaded to take in a fugitive named Losi, who in the end proves to be an informer assigned to help orchestrate the arrest of others. However, it is the doctor who will receive the worst punishment. A subsequent search for Losi ends in the cemetery where his grave is located. Thus, the pressing question of why he acted as he did remains unanswered. World Literature Today reviewer Charles Fantazzi called Il raggio d'ombra "a gripping spy story, narrated in a quiet, rapid, unsensational manner." Fantazzi pointed out both the novel's absurd qualities and standard elements of an espionage story, such as secret meetings and dramatic locations. He concluded, "the narrative is suffused with a subdued irony and elusive melancholy that may be construed as a veiled allegory of the political betrayals and moral ambiguities of contemporary Italy."

Pontiggia's best-selling La grande sera is a consistently antirealistic novel about a man who abandons his family, friends, and career because he is tired of them. He leaves to create a new life, but the novel stays focused on the lives of the people left in his wake. Marcheschi has likened this approach to "a carousel with strange figures rotating around a hidden pivot" and said of the secondary characters, "they share a gray, unhappy life devoid of meaning and purpose." In a review for World Literature Today, Gaetano A. Iannace explained that the novel "tells a story which evolves in an atmosphere of decaying values and the breakdown of such cherished human institutions as marriage and the family." Iannace was strongly critical of what he perceived as the author's liberal use of facts, violence, and sex to create commercial appeal. The critic also was unhappy with Pontiggia's use of satire and humor, which he said "might have been intended as a satire of the human condition," but instead left the reader "hopelessly confused and dissatisfied."

The author uses yet another unconventional approach in Vite di uomini non illustri, a fictional encyclopedia of eighteen "non-illustrious" people. Parodying Plutarch's classical model of reviewing famous lives, it instead details the experiences of ordinary people. Their lives are often unhappy and marked by self-deception, with exceptional happiness appearing as a rare occurrence. Describing it as being filled with sarcasm as well as compassion, "informed by caustic intent" as well as stocked with comic relief, Marcheschi called Vite di uomini non illustri one of Pontiggia's "most accomplished books."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 196: ItalianNovelists since World War II, 1965-1995, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.

periodicals

American Book Review, May-June, 1990, Lois E. Nesbit, review of The Invisible Player, pp. 25-26.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1988, review of TheInvisible Player, p. 1701.

Publishers Weekly, December, 9, 1988, review of TheInvisible Player, p. 58.

World Literature Today, spring, 1980, Cecilia Ross, review of La morte in banca, p. 266; spring, 1984, Charles Fantazzi, review of Il raggio d'ombra, p. 252; spring, 1990, Gaetano A. Iannace, review of La grande sera, p. 292.*