SOURCE: A review of Command, and I Will Obey You, in The Saturday Review, August 23, 1969, p. 41.

In the review below, Bergin finds the stories collected in Command, and I Will Obey You pleasant, amusing, and educational, but not likely to affect Moravia's stature as a writer .

The first thing that will strike the reader contemplating Command, and I Will Obey You by Italy's most fertile storyteller is that all of the items in the collection are of the same length—none shorter than six pages, none longer than eight. This suggests that they were originally written for the "third page" (always dedicated to matters of literature and art) of an Italian newspaper; Moravia among his other distinctions is a terzapaginista without rivals. Only a uniquely competent craftsman could go on week after week meeting the strict requirements of this kind of literary Houdinism. There is no more skilled...