Then you have the crux of the crisis that befalls the protagonist of Italian writer Luigi Pirandello’s classic 1926 novel One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand, newly released by Spurl Editions, the inimitable little US publisher of nearly forgotten literary and photographic treasures. Yet what if that is impossible? What if the image we have of ourselves is at once entirely singular, unverifiable, and at odds to some degree, great or small, with the multitude of images everyone else has of us? But implicit in claiming, or rejecting any identity, is the assumption that we can know our own selves, and have that knowledge accepted and validated by others. In a world obsessed with identity politics, there seems to be a considerable currency placed on defining and understanding oneself in relation to others. And everything, as long as it lasts, bears the penalty of its form, the penalty of being this way and no longer being able to be otherwise. The being must be trapped in a form, and for some time it has to stay in it, here or there, this way or that. You want to be, eh? There’s this catch: in abstract, you cannot just be. Fate, fortune, chance: all snares of life. And if you lose an eye, it’s a fact and you can even lose both, and if you’re a painter it’s the worst thing that can happen to you. To be born in one period rather than another, as I’ve already said and of this or that father, and in this or that condition to be male or female in Lapland or in central Africa and handsome or ugly with a hump or without: facts.
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