Giuseppe Pontiggia - a university professor's attempt to discover the true identity of the author who sends him a string of threatening letters. Eventually, he comes to see that the "invisible player" is not merely behind his back, but within his soul

Giuseppe Pontiggia, The Invisible Player. Trans. by Anna Cancogni. Eridanos Press, 1989.

A novel, winner of Italy's Campiello Prize, that describes the gradual breakdown of a modern intellectual in the face of the inexplicable. It portrays a university professor's attempt to discover the true identity of the author who sends him a string of threatening letters. Eventually, he comes to see that the "invisible player" is not merely behind his back, but within his soul.


The Invisible Player has an academic setting. The central character is a professor of philology, the action set in motion by an anonymous letter to the editor in the journal, The Voice of Antiquity, attacking him. The professor takes it very personally, and becomes obsessed with finding out who is behind it -- and, though he tries to be discreet in his hunt, his reaction only makes him more of a subject for gossip. (Early on he berates his curious assistant: "Why look for the author ? Then the whole thing will snowball, assume gigantic dimensions" -- but he can't take his own advice.)
       The professor is married to a younger -- and very attractive -- woman, and he's also concerned about what she might be doing behind his back. Her relationship with Daverio -- a former rival for her affections -- certainly seems a bit close for comfort ..... The professor nevertheless also has his own extramarital ambitions -- though his ruthless criticism of one aspiring poet's work probably don't help his long-term plans with her.
       The professor can't keep himself from confronting those he suspects of being behind the letter. he tries to approach them in a roundabout way, but he's pretty transparent (and most admit that they're candidates). Desperation leads him to even break into the offices of the journal and rifle through the letters to the editor - but finding a name and address only gets him so far: the person behind the letter has done a good job of covering his tracks.
       The professor is also a chess player, and the book is also a chess game, a clever back and forth of attacks and feints and sacrifices. Much of the book is made up of the head-to-head confrontations (though they almost all appear very civil) between pairs of characters (few scenes find more than two people together); dialogue-heavy, there is occasionally a sense of artifice here, but generally Pontiggia presents these confrontations and exchanges -- these games -- very nicely.
       The book turns fairly quickly in its resolution, the professor's world falling apart a bit faster than he can keep track of. Elegantly tied together, the end has that double-edged satisfaction of real life, where victories can come at great cost, a petty battle won at the cost of something much greater and what appears, for a moment, to be clear is quickly obscured.
       Pontiggia has a nice touch and paints an affectionate picture of a tortured academic world, with characters like Liveranti who roams "through the bare rooms" of the immense apartment he bought but could not afford to furnish, or various specialists, obsessed with the limited part of the world that they are experts in. Some of the conversations and encounters drag on a bit, and some seem superfluous, but the larger game Pontiggia is playing is well-concealed, his presentation much more subtle and elegant than one usually finds in such Borgesian fictions.
       The Invisible Player is perhaps a bit slow and too deliberate for some, but it's a nice piece of work. - www.complete-review.com/reviews/italia/pontig1.htm

This academic thriller is the Italian Pontiggia's first to appear in English: part psychological investigation, part scathing satire of academia, it's fun but limited in interest, intended for an erudite audience. A Professor, attacked anonymously in a letter published in The Voice of Antiquity, a magazine, spends the entire book trying to track down the culprit. At times, the plot seems more like an elaborate joke stretched into a novel (replete with numerous allusions to chess) than like a credible story, but satirical set-pieces and the development of a psychological love-triangle save it. The Professor's wife chose him over Daverio, another former teacher, and Daverio has never gotten over her ("" 'Please, Lord, make her love me back,' he prayed. . .""). He speaks to her often but never gets anywhere; finally, he descends into a nervous breakdown that will lead to suicide. The Professor's wife then leaves her husband, but not for Daverio. And the Professor's investigation takes him throughout academia and its publishing world, where backbiting and pettiness run rampant. The investigation, that is, leads him to understand how little he knows about himself or others. The set-pieces include satires of the Professor, his colleagues and students, mostly pompous bureaucrats or bad but ambitious writers; of Martelli, editor-in-chief of New Narrative, who ""used to screen the manuscripts he received with a rigor as intense as the secret confusion he felt every time he came across some unknown author""; of the ex-writer Cattaneo. The Professor, with Cattaneo's help, composes a response to the letter, but finally fails to solve anything, especially the enigma of his own personality. ""You mean to tell me that you still believe in language?"" one colleague sums up. Post-modern game-playing--at times, clever and fascinating (and even moving, with Daverio's suicide); at other times, passÉ--Pontiggia is chewing over more than he's bitten off.  - Kirkus Reviews



Giuseppe Pontiggia, Born Twice. Vintage, 2003.

When a breach birth leaves Paulo severely disabled, his father, the articulate, unsentimental Professor Frigerio, struggles to come to terms with his son’s condition. Face to face with his own limitations, Frigerio confronts the strange way society around him handles Paolo’s handicaps and observes his surprising gifts. In spare, deeply affecting episodes, the professor of language explores the nuanced boundaries between “normal” and “disabled” worlds.
A remarkable memoir of fathering, winner of the 2001 Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary honor, Born Twice is noted Italian author Guiseppe Pontiggia’s American debut. Sometimes meditative, often humorous, and always probing, Pontiggia’s haunting characters linger and resound long after the book is done.

Veteran Italian writer Pontiggia illuminates "the distance that exists between the disabled and us" in this compassionate, deeply moral novel, his first to appear in English. When high school teacher Frigerio's son Paolo is born, a physician's ineptitude leaves the boy with permanent disabilities. Frigerio and his wife, Franca, are informed by a therapist that Paolo suffers from a neurological disorder that slows his learning and permanently hinders his motor skills, though he is quite lucid and intelligent. The novel comprises brief vignettes over Paolo's first 30 years, in which Frigerio offers wry observations about his complicated relationship with the boy and about the way others react to him. Frigerio parses doctors' examinations for hidden meanings, noting that conversations are conducted so that "no one ever has to say the truth." Franca provides a thorny counterpoint kind to Paolo and justifiably impatient with Frigerio but she is perhaps less realistic about the child's condition. Frigerio muses on the many ways people most notably an odious, manipulative principal who uses a bad leg as a psychological weapon exploit their own disabilities. Franca and their other son, Alfredo, have only bit parts; even Paolo often seems like a cipher hovering in the background. But Frigerio dogged, intelligent and self-aware will win readers over with an array of casual yet profound insights into the human condition ("Why not test for stupidity as a planetary epidemic?") and his fierce dedication to his son. - Publishers Weekly   

 

This taciturn, extremely intelligent novel won Italy's Strega Prize. When Professor Frigerio's son Paolo is born, he sustains cerebral lesions as the result of an inept delivery; his mind isn't impaired, it turns out, but he lurches when he walks and has difficulty speaking. There's very little railing at Fate here (and there's a profoundly un-American lack of interest in litigation); rather, Frigerio's wry, fugue-like series of meditations on what Paolo's disabilities mean, over time, to him, to Paolo's intent, impassioned mother, Franca, and to Paolo himself turns into a subtle, unsentimental primer not only on the nature of disability but on the pitfalls we encounter when we try to turn a child into someone
 © 2005 The New Yorker