One, None and a Hundred Grand

Autor: Luigi Pirandello
Year: 1926

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First half of the book unfortunately tired me with endless explanations and variations of the same idea, so I skimmed the majority of the second part.

After (partially) reading One, None and a Hundred Grand I kept catching myself thinking about it's ideas, or rather, thinking about my other selves, and selves of others that appeared in different circumstances, thinking what i felt about that.

While the concept of a multitude of selves cohabiting the same body, shaped not so much by how a person sees themselves as by how others see them, is a curious one, the first half of the book loses itself in constant repetition of the same concept, explaining it over and over again. I liked the way the book is talking directly to the reader, but after defining it's idea it wasn't doing anything interesting with it. The insanity that comes later in the book doesn't feel to me fulfilling or subversive either. 

As for the concept itself - since I'm growing more and more interested in the subject of perception and interpretation of arts (reader-response, encoding/decoding model of communication etc.), it is interesting to see that the novel raises questions that later reader-response theory would also be interested in. To me the examples shown in the book can be used very well to theorize on the analysis of art (or rather, an analysis of an analysis) as well.