All the Errors

by Giorgio Manganelli, Henry Martin (Translator)

Until the appearance of All the Errors in 1990, Giorgio Manganelli's works had been translated into every major Western language except Henry Martin's fluid translation redresses the oversight of this eloquent, meticulous Italian master, presenting a book of Manganelli's distinctively original shorter fictions. These are seven narratives of metaphysical exploration. One story is the valedictory monologue of a soul on the verge of being born; another tells of a labyrinth that enters itself, seeking to explain its own pathways; in still another, a man and a woman offer mirroring explanations of why they cannot love each other. These are tales of solitude, yet a solitude touched with hope, and they share an allegiance to the themes of Sartre, Camus, Kafka, and Calvino.

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Giorgio Manganelli was an Italian journalist, avant-garde writer, translator and literary critic. A native of Milan, he was one of the leaders of the avant-garde literary movement in Italy in the 1960s, Gruppo 63. He was a baroque and expressionist writer. Manganelli translated Edgar Allan Poe's complete stories and authors like T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Eric Ambler, O. Henry, Ezra Pound, Robert Louis Stevenson, Byron's Manfred and others into Italian. He published an experimental work of fiction, Hilarotragoedia, in 1964, at the time he was a member of the avant-garde Gruppo 63.

Reviews

[Lorenzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dunque, non negherò che questa mia vita nuda, inerte, passiva in qualche modo mi custodisca, mi tuteli, mi accompagni.

Estremamente oscuro. Racconti ontologici, ove spesso problema, impedimento, errore siamo Noi.

[Hannah]

Lord, I can only hope that this is more readable in its original Italian, because this one was a STRUGGLE. The first and last stories were fine, but everything in between read like an incoherent thought that you have right before falling asleep. People compare Manganelli to Italo Calvino, but at least Calvino can maintain a semblance of a narrative through line for more than half a page. I bought another Manganelli book at the same time that I bought this one and will probably read that one just to feel better about spending money on it, but I anticipate that one will similarly take about 4 months to finish.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ora [...] so che nessuna delle due strade del labirinto va scartata a favore dell'altra strada; so che tutti gli errori, e io ignoro se qualcosa vi sia che non sia errore, formano la compagine corrotta e perfetta del labirinto; e infine mi abbandono alla pace immobile in mezzo alle innumere strade, la pace che mi viene dal sapere, come da sempre sapevo, che io solamente sono il labirinto." (Autocoscienza del labirinto, p. 126)