SOURCE: "The Short Stories," in Alberto Moravia, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1974, pp. 115-24.

In the following essay from her book-length critical study of Moravia, Cottrell discusses the realistic, surrealistic, and satiric nature of Moravia's short stories.

The early short stories, written between 1927 and 1952, are for many critics and readers some of [Alberto] Moravia's finest works. They fall into two general categories: the neo-realistic stories which include the collections La bella vita (1935), L'imbroglio (1937), L'amante infelice (1943), the stories published with L'amore coniugale (1949), and a few separate pieces. The second category is made up of satiric and surrealistic tales, principally those of I sogni del pigro (1940) and L'epidemia (1944). Nevertheless, Moravia regularly combined characteristics of both types in all his stories including his later ones. As the distinguished Italian critic Francesco Flora has pointed out, when Moravia is naturalistic and realistic in the details and framework of his story, the content is...