I stumbled upon a dust-covered copy of One, None, and a Hundred Thousand in the haunches of the local library (I consider the library an animal). When I scanned the book at the very futuristic check-out machine, it told me to borrow the book manually instead. I felt a sharp but short-lived pang of joy at the failure of technology. Only humans come in handy, after all. The librarian told me that if a book hasn't been borrowed in a long time the system “just forgets it”. I think they tried to explain why the book wasn't being detected by the machine in an easy way; I'm sure data doesn't just vanish like so. Not only did this conversation with the librarian confirm that I was meant to find this book, the premise was also right up my alley. A guy's wife tells him he has a crooked nose and his life get derailed beyond repair. (Or does it? I find myself debating the pros and cons of living without all kinds of norms. Where does one draw the line between freedom and selfishness?)
Enough rambling. I had such a good time reading Luigi Pirandello's One, None, and A Hundred Thousand. It made me wonder about a lot of things, but chiefly among them was how and why we spend our entire lives working towards building an image of ourselves in our eyes and maintaining an image of ourselves in others' eyes, only for both of these versions of our self to be forgotten— for our image of our self can not live beyond us and our image of how others view us is always going to be personal and utterly inaccurate.
“You are wronging me, thinking I don't have or can't have any reality beyond this one you assign me, which is yours alone, believe me: an idea of yours, the idea you've formed of me, a possibility of being as you feel it, as it seems to you, as you recognise it possible in you; for of what I can be for myself, not only can you know nothing, but I myself can know nothing.”
All in all, this is a short and mind-bending read that explores something we all know, but never quite practice the knowledge of—how everyone has different perspectives about everything and that a complete understanding of all these perspectives is impossible. In short, the subjectivity of it all. But I don't think that's quite the point that lingers with me still, months after reading this little Italian gem.
Pirandello's work, at once meditative and destructive, seemed to me more of a commentary on the mindless and performative nature of our lives and how the most genuine expressions are usually socially damnable.
“I felt like doing them, doing mad things: rolling over in the streets or flying along in dance-steps, winking here, sticking out my tongue and making faces there... And instead I walked down the street, serious, so serious.”
And I think this book has aged so well because of the dichotomy in the way we project ourselves online versus offline. It's also easier to observe ourselves now. Even the fact that we've just accepted that we're constantly being surveilled or might be taken a video or a photo of, lends to how we alter ourselves in public knowingly, and even worse—unknowingly. It's frightening to think how deep our pretences can run and even more frightening to think that perhaps this depth has no end at all. Or that the first few layers of pretence might have by now become one with our true self... if a true self does exist.
Mostly, I find myself curious about Pirandello's thoughts on the thousand more selves we now have in the age of social media, filters, video trends like "mukbang" and "a day in my life", AI, and surveillance.
...you have to arrest life inside you for an instant, to see yourself. Like standing before the camera. You pose. And posing is like becoming a statue for a moment. Life continuously moves, and can never really see itself." "So then I have never seen myself while alive?" "Never. Not in the way that I can see you. But I see an image of you that is mine only; it is certainly not yours. You, while alive, may have been able to catch just a glimpse of yours in some snapshot made of you. But you will surely have been unpleasantly surprised. You may even have had some difficulty in recognising yourself, in movement, awkward.”
