Giraffes in the Garden of Italian Literature

"Writing in 1926, Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) acknowledges his peculiarity within the Italian literary field by describing himself as a giraffe or a kangaroo in Italy''s beautiful garden of literature. Gadda''s self-characterization as exotic and even ungainly animal applies in equal measure to Italo Svevo (1861-1928) and Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920), authors who, like Gadda, thwarted efforts at ...