A Tournament of Misfits: Tall Tales and Short

by Aldo Palazzeschi

Aldo Palazzeschi (1885-1974) is arguably the major twentieth-century Italian writer who has been most neglected by the English-speaking world. Born in Florence and trained as an actor, Palazzeschi ranks high as a poet and fiction writer in his homeland. His work, which attempts to recreate the experience of a spectator watching and listening to a character on stage, won him the praise of F.T. Marinetti, the founder of Italian futurism, who enrolled the young poet in his avant-garde coterie despite the fact that, stylistically, Palazzeschi's work had little in common with futurism. A Tournament of Misfits brings together a selection of Palazzeschi's short fiction for the first time in English. Through clear and fluid translations, Nicolas J. Perella demonstrates Palazzeschi's use of laughter to debunk social and literary myths. As a social being, Palazzeschi felt himself a deviant, but he was saved from a self-destructive bitterness by his capacity for irony, which he often directed at himself as well as at others. Yet, it would be a mistake not to see the desperate yearning for liberation from society's rigid code behind the irony and the fun in Palazzeschi's work. With this translation, Perella brings Palazzeschi to life for a new audience to appreciate.

260 pages, Paperback

First published December 24, 2005

About the author

Aldo Palazzeschi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaldo palatˈtseski]; 2 February 1885 – 17 August 1974) was the pen name of Aldo Giurlani, an Italian novelist, poet, journalist and essayist.

He was born in Florence to a well-off, bourgeois family. Following his father's direction he studied accounting but gave up that pursuit as he became enamored with the theater and acting. Respectful of his father's wishes that the family name not be associated with acting, he chose his maternal grandmother's maiden name Palazzeschi as a pseudonym.

His family's comfortable circumstances enabled him to publish his first book of poetry, I cavalli bianchi (The White Horses) in 1905 using his acting pseudonym.

After meeting Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, he became a fervent Futurist. However, he was never entirely ideologically aligned with the movement and had a falling out with the group over Italy's involvement in World War I which he opposed, even though he did spend a brief period at the front lines after having been inducted into the military in 1916. His "futurist period" (roughly the 1910s) was a very fecund time in which he published a series of works that cemented his reputation. Most notable of these are his book of poems L'incendiario (The Arsonist) (1910) and the novel Il codice di Perelà (translated into English as Man of Smoke) (1911). Marinetti used to give away more copies of the Futurist books he published than those he sold, and Palazzeschi later recalled that in 1909, so many copies of one of his books were given away that even he failed to secure a copy.

During the interwar years, his poetical production decreased, as he became involved in journalism and other pursuits. He took no part in the official culture of the Fascist regime, but he found himself working in various magazines that did. Some of those were: Pegaso, Pan, and Il Selvaggio.

In the late sixties and early seventies he started publishing again, with a series of novels that resecured his place in the new, post-war avant-garde. He died in 1974 in his apartment in Rome.

Today he is often considered an important influence on later Italian writers, especially those of the neoavanguardia in both prose and verse. His work is well noted by its "grotesque and fantastic elements".