‘The Singularity’ by Dino Buzzati     (1960) – 127 pages           Translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel

No, ‘The Singularity’ was not written via artificial intelligence (AI). Instead it is about a machine produced by a group of scientists and mathematicians which has the intelligence and comprehension of a human.

“The machine will read our thoughts, create masterpieces, reveal the most hidden mysteries.”

“And what if one day the automaton’s way of thinking eschewed your commands and acted on its own?”

“It’s what we’re hoping for. It would mean success. Without freedom what kind of spirit would it be?”

“And what if, with a soul like ours, it becomes corrupt like us? Could action be taken to correct it? And with its awesome intelligence wouldn’t it be able to deceive us?”

These are all good questions still today. I believe the writer Dino Buzzati was quite prescient in raising these issues already back in 1960. If a machine can comprehend like a human, could it become dishonest and unprincipled like some humans become? So far we only hear the so-called positive side of artificial intelligence, yet there are so many ways it could be used dishonestly.

In ‘The Singularity’, the head scientist working on this machine models it after his dead wife Laura whom he loved. In his first attempt at building the machine he puts all the good qualities of Laura into it. However he finds the machine is still lacking something.

“On the whole it was her, but something was still missing, the mark, the mysterious essence that makes each of us unique in the world.”

Laura was killed in a car accident when she was trysting with her lover while her husband, the mad scientist, was working on his machine. The scientist, still in love with his dead wife, comes to this conclusion.

“For it to really be Laura, we had to include the venom, the lies, the cunning, the vanity, the pride, the insane desires, everything that made me suffer so much.”

So far with the Global Positioning System (GPS) we have seen a quite positive use of artificial intelligence to help us get where we want to go. Beware in the future there could be some very negative, even wicked, uses of artificial intelligence.

Grade:     A

‘A Love Affair’ by Dino Buzzati    (1963) – 288 pages                    Translated from the Italian by Joseph Green

Women of today might not take kindly to the opening of this novel. Antonio Dorigo is a quite prosperous nearly fifty year-old stage set designer and architect in Milan, Italy. He has never been married. When Antonio wants to have sex, he calls Signora Ermelina who provides him with young women. It is a discreet operation. At the beginning of ‘A Love Affair’ Signora Ermelina sets him up with Laide who is only 19, underage. Antonio is satisfied.

“What a wonderful thing, thought Dorigo, prostitution is!”

After a few times with Laide, Antonio becomes obsessed with her. Meanwhile Laide is totally indifferent to him.

“Not that sex with Antonio gave her much pleasure, on the contrary, it clearly meant nothing to her at all.”

But the more she ignores him, the more obsessed with her Antonio becomes. Antonio offers to pay for her apartment and provide her with adequate spending money in the futile hope that she will like him just a little more. However Laide is always doing stuff behind his back and making lame excuses like visiting a sick mother. Antonio doubts her stories and constantly tries to catch her in a lie. There’s this guy Marcello who hangs around her apartment when Antonio is not there. Laide claims he’s a cousin, and that they do not have sex. Antonio becomes extremely jealous.

“He’s never before found himself in a mess like this. He’s never found himself naked on a bed, eyes wide, watching a girl thirty years younger than himself, a cocky little whore without the least semblance of affection for him. He’s never found himself head over heels in love with a girl who doesn’t give a damn about him, who doesn’t even need him inasmuch as she could find a dozen just like him, who goes with him only because for the moment it seems convenient for her.”

With all Laide’s excuses, one assumes she is also carrying on with her prostitution sideline.

The title ‘A Love Affair’ must be ironic. The novel was published in 1963, and may be Buzzati’s answer to Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’.

For me, this overwrought affair goes on for much too long, for at least 150 pages, with Laide telling Antonio stories to cover up what she’s doing and Antonio trying to believe but doubting the stories. It felt like years and years were going by, but it all takes place within a year.

This somewhat repugnant lengthy realistic novel is much different from Dino Buzzati’s other works. I would recommend that a reader at least first read ‘The Tartar Steppes’ (which was recently republished by NYBR as ‘The Stronghold’) to get a much more positive view of Buzzati’s writing.

Grade:   B-

‘The Tartar Steppe’ by Dino Buzzati    (1940) – 198 pages            Translated from the Italian by Stuart Hood

‘The Tartar Steppe’ follows the life of a young soldier in such a clear and precise manner that it is as though it were etched in stone rather than written.

When Giovanni Drogo first arrives at the remote Fort Bastiani, he misses the excitement and color of the city, the bars and the young women. On his way to the fort he meets a Captain Ortiz who has been there who gives him some advice.

“Watch out,” he said, “you will let them convince you, you’ll end up by staying here too, I have only to look into your eyes.”

Drogo wonders if he should just leave this drab military fort immediately. But then he agrees to sign up for just four months. But the monotonous regularity of military life somehow grows on him, and after four months he decides to stay on for two more years.

The men at the fort are waiting for their enemy, the Tartars, to make an advance toward them. I had to look up who the Tartars were and found they are a semi-nomadic ethnic group that comes from a Russian place called Tatarstan which is about 100 miles east of Moscow.

Before he knows it, thirty years have passed, and Drogo is still at the fort. A couple of times over the years it has appeared that the Tartars were staging an attack.

“Never before had the orderlies run up the stairs so quickly, never had the uniforms been so tidy, the bayonets so gleaming, the bugle calls so military. So they had not waited in vain; the years had not been wasted; the old Fort would, after all, be of some use.”

But these indications of activity by the Tartars turn out to be false alarms.

As the decades pass with Drogo and his fellow soldiers waiting for an enemy who never surfaces, his old friends in the city meanwhile have married, had children, and led full lives.

“One after another the pages turned – the grey pages of the days, the black pages of the nights, and both Drogo and Ortiz (and perhaps some of the other senior officers) felt a growing anxiety that they might no longer have enough time left.”

‘The Tartar Steppe’ is about a soldier’s life, but its theme of time passing is universal. Life happened while we were waiting, and the years and decades went by before we knew it.

Previously I have read two other excellent books by Dino Buzzati, the graphic novel ‘Poem Strip’ and the children’s story ‘The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily’. This guy Buzzati was multi-talented.

Grade:    A