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NYRB Classics
November 2008
On Sale: November 18, 2008
208 pages ISBN: 1590172892 EAN: 9781590172896 Paperback
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Fiction
Though one of the best-known books in the world, Pinocchio
at the same time remains unknown—linked in many minds to
the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo
Collodi’s splendid original. That story is of course about
a puppet who, after many trials, succeeds in becoming
a “real boy.” Yet it is hardly a sentimental or morally
improving tale. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the
great subversives of the written page, a madcap genius
hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires, a
renegade who in many ways resembles his near contemporary
Huck Finn. Pinocchio the novel, no less than Pinocchio the character,
is one of the great inventions of modern literature. A
sublime anomaly, the book merges the traditions of the
picaresque, of street theater, and of folk and fairy tales
into a work that is at once adventure, satire, and a
powerful enchantment that anticipates surrealism and
magical realism. Thronged with memorable characters and
composed with the fluid but inevitable logic of a dream,
Pinocchio is an endlessly fascinating work that is
essential equipment for life.
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