La strada della gioia [The Road to Joy]. New York: Liberal Press, Inc., 1946.

La strada della gioia [The Road to Joy]. New York: Liberal Press, Inc., 1946.

This work, with a cover illustration by W. Vercellino, is a series of philosophical essays, apparently all written by Pietro Novasio, about the “art of life,” with barely a page gone by before the writer invokes Schopenhauer, Emerson, Vico, Aristotle, Manzoni, Lao-Tse and Dostoyevsky in rapid fire. Among other interesting things in his life, Novasio for a time directed the magazine Divagando.

Franco Lalli explains in the preface that Novasio, a former deputy in the Italian Parliament, was a self-proclaimed political exile living in New York, where he broadcast a regular radio program from his office at the New York Public Library’s 42nd Street Research Library.

Advice to the reader in bold includes such nostrums as “Weak men wait for opportunities; great ones know how to create them.”

Odabella’s specific contribution to the work is not specified, but may be the last chapter, translated here as “The Rules of a Good Life,” printed in a smaller-sized typeface.

Pietro Novasio

Franco Lalli

Elisa Odabella

Liberal Press, Inc.

1946

20 x 14cm; 160 p.

Italian