SOURCE: A review of Erotic Tales, in Studies in Short Fiction, Summer, 1987, pp. 315-16.

In the following review, Cushman finds the first six longer stories in Erotic Tales explicit rather than erotic, and the remaining fourteen shorter stories skimpy and unconvincing.

Erotic Tales seems to demonstrate that even grand old men of Italian literature sometimes get horny. For almost sixty years Alberto Moravia has been Italy's chronicler of modern urban life, his novels and stories filled with characters driven by lust, greed, and ambition. Of the twenty stories in this mistitled collection, only the first six are specifically sexual. But these stories are very specifically sexual and have lust enough for the entire volume. Erotic Tales, written in a style both matter-of-fact and dreamlike, provides the opportunity to read quietly lurid stories about bestiality, incest, pedophilia, and sadomasochism while managing to remain more or less respectable.

Some of...