One, None and a Hundred Thousand: A novel

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It’s like this: peasant women say that when a baby’s hair ends on his nape in a little tail, like the one you have there, the next born will be a male.” It hasn't been a problem, but when, one morning, his wife points out that his nose tilts slightly to the right he is floored by the discovery of this long-unnoticed (by him) flaw. Why is perspective so elusive? In a world of differing perspectives, which are the absolute truths? Or is there anything known as absolute truth? At first, with an ailing wife and no money, Pirandello contemplated suicide. Instead, he redoubled his efforts. He took on more teaching work and wrote at a furious pace. He would go on to write 7 novels, numerous short stories, poetry, and around 40 plays throughout his career.

Irrespective of whether we have sympathy for such ontological convictions or not, what weakens Pirandello’s arguments is also what weakens One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand as a novel. Namely, Moscarda explains his philosophical discovery with the kind of urgency that suggests it’s a big deal, with enormous ramifications for how we lead our lives and how society functions. Unfortunately, he doesn’t show this via a narrative or plot so much as tell us via the mental soliloquies introduced above, something which implies that, on the contrary, deviations in perception don’t actually make society unworkable. And in the rare instance where Pirandello does attempt to illustrate the threats posed by divergent perceptions, he leaves omissions or speaks in the abstract, scared that giving concrete examples would undermine his point: The Chicago Manual of Style recommends spelling out the numbers zero through one hundred and using figures thereafter—except for whole numbers used in combination with hundred, thousand, hundred thousand, million, billion, and beyond (e.g., two hundred; twenty-eight thousand; three hundred thousand; one million). In Chicago style, as opposed to AP style, we would write four hundred, eight thousand, and twenty million with no numerals—but like AP, Chicago style would require numerals for 401; 8,012; and 20,040,086.One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand is narrated by Vitangelo Moscarda, who is both one and many -- and that's his problem. Given that the book is more of an essay than a narrative, readers will enjoy it precisely to the extent that they find themselves agreeing with what Moscarda/Pirandello expounds. Admittedly, some of his ideas are interesting, such as the notion that, in a godless universe, there’s no reliable way of deciding whose perception of a particular person is more authoritative or accurate. “You want to know, finally, what everything is based on? I’ll tell you. On the presumption that God will always keep you. The presumption that reality, as it is for you, must be and is the same for everyone else.”

The story is about a man Vitangelo Moscarda who one day, was told my his wife that his nose leans to the right. Moscarda does not notice it before as he thinks that his nose was straight (this image of himself seems to be what "one" means in the title). However, the comment that his nose leans to the right makes him realize that his perception of himself may not necessarily be accurate (the "no one" in the title). Lastly in the story, Moscarda realizes that many people may have their own perceptions about himself - the son of a usurer who used to own a bank (the "one hundred thousand" in the title). considerazioni che mi scavavano dentro e bucheravano giù per torto e su per traverso lo spirito, come una tana di talpa; senza che di fuori ne paresse nulla.”Quante volte ci siamo chiesti come ci vedono gli altri? Esattamente come ci vediamo noi? È un po' come sentire la propria voce in un vocale :"No, ma io ho quella voce lì?" This mountains-out-of-molehills approach will also mark what become his new obsessions, as he now comes to question the very fundamentals of his identity: he had always seen himself one way, but now realizes he didn't see his true self.

Who wouldn’t be irritated, on receiving as a generous concession what had previously been denied him as a right? I blurted out a venomous “thanks” and, sure of having no cause for grief or for dejection, I attached no importance to those slight defects, but a great, exceptional importance to the fact that I had lived all these years, without ever changing noses, always with that one, and those eyebrows, and those ears, those hands, and those legs; it wasn’t till I had taken a wife that I found out that these were all defective. Well, no. It was my nature. But for that matter, true, it was also my idleness, I admit. Rich, I had two faithful friends, Sebastiano Quantorzo and Stefano Firbo, to handle my affairs after the death of my father, who, though he tried in every way, had never succeeded in making me accomplish anything; except taking a wife, of course, when I was very young; perhaps in the hope that I might soon have a son who wouldn’t resemble me in the least; but, poor man, he wasn’t able to obtain even this from me. Ah, yes, no doubt, a trifle; however, following him at a distance, I saw him stop, first at one shop window, and then a second time, farther on, at another; and, still farther on, and for a longer period, a third time, at the mirror of a stall, to observe his chin; and I’m sure that, the moment he was home, he ran to the wardrobe to renew, with greater leisure, at that other mirror, his acquaintance with himself, with that defect. And I haven’t the slightest doubt that, to wreak his own revenge, or to continue a joke he felt deserved wider circulation in the town, after having asked some friend (as I had asked him) if he had ever noticed that defect of the chin, he would then discover some other defect in that friend’s mouth or on his forehead, and that friend, in turn . . . – of course! of course! – I could swear that for several days in a row, in the noble city of Richieri, I saw (if it wasn’t really all my imagination) a considerable number of my fellow-citizens move from one shop window to another, stopping at each to study a cheekbone or the corner of an eye, the lobe of an ear, or the side of a nose. And even after a week, one man came up to me with a bewildered look to ask me if it was true that, every time he began speaking, he inadvertently contracted his left eyelid.A chi dire «io»? Che valeva dire «io», se per gli altri aveva un senso e un valore che non potevano mai essere i miei; e per me, così fuori degli altri, l’assumerne uno diventa subito l’orrore di questo vuoto e di questa solitudine?” Vitangelo Moscarda discovers by way of a completely irrelevant question that his wife poses to him that everyone he knows, everyone he has ever met, has constructed a Vitangelo persona in their own imagination and that none of these personas corresponds to the image of Vitangelo that he himself has constructed and believes himself to be.