The Time of Indifference: A Novel [Paperback]

Alberto Moravia (Author), Tami Calliope (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 2000

IN 1929, THE FIFTH YEAR of the Fascist era and the twenty-first year of Alberto Moravia's life, the Italian literary world was stunned by the appearance of his first novel, The Time of Indifference. It was a deceptively simple story - five characters, the events of a few days, the intrigues of families and lovers.
The place is Rome. The central figure is Michele, a young man in confused but furious rebellion against the emptiness of bourgeois life. His father is dead; his mother, Mariagrazia, desperately clings to her bored lover, Leo; his sister has no hope of marriage or career and bleakly prepares to give herself to Leo as well. A frequent visitor is Leo's former lover, Lisa, ostensibly Mariagrazia's friend, a woman who feels she is in the final late bloom before age destroys beauty. She longs to make Michele her lover, but he is bored and disgusted by her pretenses, her vanity, her desperation.
All five are cast loose on the sea of modern life - obsessed with what they want, what they feel they are owed, the wrongs that have been done them, their loneliness. What Moravia destroys forever in this pitiless novel is the illusion that a world of ever-growing material comfort can ever feed the human soul.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Reviewed with Alberto Moravia's Life of Moravia.

Moravia's autobiography is in the form of an interview between the two writers, but it is more like the film-scripted conversation My Dinner with Andre in its well-thought-out questions and polished answers than an interview in a magazine. Moravia and Elkann knew each other well, which undoubtedly accounts for the charming civility that runs through this book. Moravia was Italy's leading man of letters during his lifetime. He died in 1990, on the day that finished copies of this book arrived from the printers. The book has not been available in English until now. In the U.S., we are more familiar with the name Moravia in film credits, as many of his novels were adapted for film, particularly by Bernardo Bertolucci, whose film based on a Moravia novel, The Conformist , was awarded an Academy Award for its screenplay. Reading this book is like taking an independent seminar in Italian culture with Moravia, a well-bred, sensitive man who embraced life passionately. He talks about the major Italian writers (Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Luigi Pirandello, his close friend Pier Paolo Pasolini, his lovers Elsa Morante and Dacia Maraini), painters (Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Levi), politicians (Aldo Moro, Guiseppe Mazzini), and directors (De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini) and slips in great anecdotes about these people and so many more.Moravia's first novel, Gli Indifferenti (The Time of Indifference ), was first published in 1929, when Moravia was 21 years old, and established him as a world-class writer. The story is simple; it concerns the reactions of members of a bourgeois family to impending financial crisis. The mother, Mariagrazia, clutches her bored, unscrupulous lover, Leo, who sexually covets her daughter, Carla, though Mariagrazia's jealousy centers on her friend, Lisa, who chases Mariagrazia's son, Michele. Michele is the protagonist, if for no other reason than his actions bring the drama to its climax. When Michele discovers that Leo is seducing his sister, he wants to respond aggressively and decisively, but as usual, after an initial surge of energy, his resolve dissipates and indifference threatens to halt any action. Moravia's use of internal monologues is extremely clever and effective in conveying Michele's pain in particular. The novel itself displays elements of the dramatic play in its unity of time and setting, but one may agree with Moravia that its stronger achievement is its claim as the first existential novel. It's a very special treat for readers to have this first novel reissued with the autobiography. Moravia often discusses it in the autobiography; but, just reading the two together, first the novel and then immediately the autobiography, is so much fun and so very enlightening. Bonnie Smothers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Zoland Books; 1st edition (February 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586420054
• ISBN-13: 978-1586420055
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,268,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Early Work of a Great Writer, May 6, 2001

By 

lvkleydorff - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time of Indifference: A Novel (Paperback)

Five people of the Roman middle class interact in this novel. Mariagrazia Ardengo, the mother, will not give up her pretensions though financially ruined and without hope for the future. She has two children, both in their twenties. Carla, who is bored with her present life, wants to change it drastically and overnight. Michele, who shows the indifference of the book's title, cannot get aroused by anything or anybody. Lisa, the mother's friend, has sunk to the level of a fat, penniless tramp, searches desperately for somebody to love her - or to at least pretend it. And then there is Leo. Leo used to be the lover of Lisa, until Mariagrazia took him away from her. Leo is the source of their financial ruin. Leo has money. Leo wants something fresher, younger, unspoiled. Leo goes after Carla. And he succeeds. After Mariagrazia and Lisa spend their time fighting over Leo, they are now left out in the cold. Michele cannot be touched by any of this but hopes that, one of these days, he can get a real life.

Moravia started on this book when he was eighteen and it was published in 1929 when he was twenty-one. He did not have the life experience he so stunningly shows in his later work. I get the impression that he studied too much of the French literature of those times and tried to follow it. That makes this novel less than perfect and somewhat outdated.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Existential Soap Opera, December 23, 2006

By 

The Mandarin (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time of Indifference: A Novel (Paperback)

As my review title indicates, I think of this novel as a an existential soap opera. It has tawdry romances, dramas, intrigues, centering mostly around shallow characters with predictable emotions. But through the main character, Michele, Moravia explores contemporary trends in modern Western culture, society, and thought.

So this book is both a pleasantly engaging page-turner and a pleasantly engaging intellectual treat. It's still not as good as Moravia's later works, particularly Boredom and The Conformist, in sexiness, intelligence, or originality. But I still highly recommend it.

2 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ..., December 11, 2001

By 

myshiak (washington, dc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Time of Indifference: A Novel (Paperback)

I am a big fan of Moravia, but I consider this to be one of his worst novels. There are only 5 characters and the novel is 300+ pages long, which makes reading it sort of a bore. Not a complete failure, worthy of one star, but seems to be far inferior to everything else written by the author.