SOURCE: "Some Words for a Master," in The New Republic, Vol. 141, No. 2341, September 28, 1959, pp. 21-4..

A longtime editor of the leftist magazine Dissent and a regular contributor to The New Republic, Howe is one of America's most highly respected literary critics and social historians. He has been a socialist since the 1930s, and his criticism is frequently informed by a liberal social viewpoint. In this review of the 1959 collection Short Stories, Howe relates Pirandello's work to nineteenth-century realism.

About half a year ago, when a collection of Pirandello's stories appeared in English, I began to read them casually and with small expectations. Like other people, I had once looked into a few of his plays and been left cold; had accepted the stock judgment that he was clever theatrically but lacking in literary range and depth; and had disliked him because of his friendliness to Italian Fascism.

Two...