Zeno’s Conscience is high modernist classic literature in all its glory. Italo Svevo studied English under James Joyce, who read this unknown author’s work and helped him publish it in Paris. Indeed, Svevo gives us Trieste in a way similar to how Joyce gives us Dublin. Today, almost a hundred years after publication, this novel is regarded as one of the best of all time.
If nothing else, the story is worth reading because of the neuroses of the protagonist. I won’t give anything away or summarize, but I will add that this is one of the main reasons we read classic literature, to hear crazy stories told by consciousnesses that differ radically from our own. Of course, there are pieces of truth sprinkled throughout this confessional, but what really makes this worth reading and distinguishes it from its contemporary, In Search of Lost Time, is Zeno’s hysterical voice and experience.
Moreover, the importance of psychotherapy in the novel is its driving force—Zeno is writing his confession as part of his treatment, and having read this novel, I am forced to reconsider the place of Portnoy’s Complaint in the canon of Western Literature, as slightly less innovative than I had originally thought. I am sure that at the time, almost a hundred years ago, Zeno’s Conscience was considered rather experimental, in its highly detailed, very long chapters, or sections, and the impetus of protagonist writing for the sake of his psychiatrist and following his reflections at the end of the book with a present-day diaristic rendering of the oncoming war and his mental convalescence. I don’t know if Roth read Svevo, but it would make sense if he had, and rewritten his own confessions in a more postmodern manner.
Overall, I highly recommend this masterpiece of world fiction as a staple alongside Woolf, Proust, Joyce, and Kafka. Less allegory than intimate portrait of humanity, Zeno’s Conscience is well worth reading for any writer who wants to paint details of psychological complexity.
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