310
MERLYN S. PITZELI
mouflaging the archetypal ideas that are his main interest. Such elabora–
tely obscure symbolism seems, finally, a defense against the dangers d
imaginative freedom ; as a creative strategy, it curiously resembles
the
pathological hero's desperate attempts to prevent his fantasies frca
turning the world he sees into terrifying chaos. The particular patllll
of Robbe-Grillet's achievement is perhaps an analogous reluctance
to
take too many risks, a longing for certain novelistic securities at the ex.
pense of as yet untried novelistic freedoms.
Leo
BerYi
LOVELESS IN UTOPIA
MY TROUBLES BEGAN. By Paolo Volponi. Translated by Belen
Sevlreid.
Grossman Publishers. $5.00.
Nowhere since Robert Owen took over the direction of
the
New Lanark mills in 1799 have his ideas and ideals been more fully
applied than in the modem factories of lng. C. Olivetti
&
C., S.p.A.,
in Ivrea, in the Canavese 'section of the Piedmonte. Adriano Olivetti,
son of the Jewish founder of the now world-wide manufacturer of busi–
ness machines, was converted to Catholicism and to a peculiar utopian
Socialism. He inherited the enterprise he was to manage to its towering
commercial importance. Like Owen, he had come to believe that
the
factory as the ba:sic producer of material welfare must also assume
responsibility for human welfare. To this end, the Olivetti company
instituted programs and projects for employee, family, and
communi~
benefits that go far beyond anything ever provided by private industry
anywhere and even beyond the government-provided beneficences
of
the
welfare states. The Olivetti policies were bitterly attacked by other Itali3n
employers as subversive, and Adriano
himself
was a pariah to his class.
The company did, however, attract and hold more than its share of
the
best workmen in the country and its labor relations, never anti-union,
were remarkably stable. Under these circumstances, it is hard for
the
skeptical American, familiar with the cynical paternalistic practices
cl
our own earlier industrial era, to accept the
evidenc~
of Adriano's
fervent idealism and disinterest in what his schemes contributed to or
subtracted from his company's
growth
and profitability. Especially because,
as these programs of social service and assistance flourished and
pr0-
liferated, the company prospered mightily. But the evidence is conclusive
and Adriano Olivetti must be considered a sport, a unique mutation
in the genus "businessman."
