The informed reader who, years hence, in perusing In Sicily may bluepencil the obvious derivations in an iterative prose that shows the lesson of Hemingway, of Gertrude Stein, of Sherwood Anderson, of William Saroyan, will easily resist the temptation of dismissing the book as an Americanese pastiche—if he has a fine ear. He will, furthermore, recognize the creaking emphasis in some of the dialogue, in many of the situations, in the painfully constructed allegory; but he will see right away that this clumsiness is honest, that it does not mark just a climactic moment in Italian literary fashions (i.e., the American style after the Paris vogue): that it represents, in short, a significant gesture. The gesture belongs more to ethical and political history than it does to poetry, to be sure…. [But in] protesting oppression, organized violence and obscurantism at the outset of World War II...