"She had a vitality which was stronger than any moral rule"

I came back around to Alberto Moravia sooner than I'd planned, thanks to the folks at Other Press, who were kind enough to send me a copy of their publication of Moravia's 1949 novella Conjugal Love, which I just finished, and enjoyed quite a bit. While I'd had every intention of diving right in to Dostoevsky again after finishing Anna Karenina, I found it hard to put down a book that began with a line as frank (and, yes, to use a word I've seen in multiple locations, as "unadorned") as "To begin with I'd like to talk about my wife." It's also hard to put a book down that is physically lighter than air in comparison to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky books, but that's another story to tell. I should also note that if you are the sort of person who likes books about writers (ahem) Moravia's seemingly so straight-forward story is likely to draw you in, so be warned. (There's far too many exquisite writing-about-writing passages to quote here.)

On the other hand, if you're a boy, and you're looking for definitive answers about women, this might not be the book for you. Reader be warned.

I think I'm still gathering my impressions, and would like to come back around to it to say more about it. (Stop me if you've heard that one before, faithful reader.) For now I'll say the book confirms for me that Moravia's a writer I want to spend some more time with in the coming years. I shall begin tonight, before I pass out in my seat, by reading his 1954 Paris Review interview.

Also, so long as I've got the mic, I'd like to send some props to translator Marina Harss, whose lucid introductory note is an example of that kind of writing-about-the-writing writing that so excellently encapsulates so much of what I knew I wanted to say but didn't know how to say because I hadn't thought up yet what I'd wanted to say about the book. Or something. I try not to beat myself up when I see an excellent piece of writing about something I've read--"Oh, they said it so much better than I ever could have, I'm so stupid, stupid!"--because, like at least in this case, I can only assume Harss became far more intimately involved with this text than I've become, and is probably smarter than me anyways, so. Still. It would be nice to be a little bit brilliant, at least. (Or at least, a little bit more awake at night.)

It's remarkable to me, in any case, that the complexity of the story can hang still in the air even after it's been captured almost as if without effort in the introductory note. Worth circling back to after you finish the book itself.