True Confessions: One of the great eccentric narrators, Zeno

Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno (1923) is often, rightly, grouped among the great modernist novels of the 20th century. I wouldn't put Zeno on as high a rung as Magic Mountain, Ulysses, or Search of Lost Time/Remembrance - but Svevo's Zeno definitely ranks among the great eccentric, obsessive narrators of all time - right up there with the Underground Man, L'Etranger, Ahab to a degree (though Ahab gradually slips into the distant background of his own tale), and Marcel, maybe. Maybe - because Svevo doesn't have the world view of these other great novelists - his narrator, Zeno, is so eccentric and narcissistic that all he talks about is himself and his own illnesses and peculiarities - these being so odd and bountiful that the novel is quite engaging and often hilarious. As we read a 100-page chapter about how Zeno "chooses" his wife from among 4 sisters (each with a name beginning with A - like a bride from another country, says the Z-led Zeno), a few of his oddities stand out - notably his obsession with cigarettes, and how he continually marks off periods of his life by his "last cigarette," eventually abbreviated as l.c., even having himself locked away in a sanatorium to try to keep away from smoking - unsuccessfully, of course - smoking has something to do with his connection to his father, part of an Oedipal struggle (he began as a child by surreptitiously finishing the cigars his father left smoldering, hm). Also, the moment in a bar when a friend with rheumatism explains that there are 54 leg muscles engaged in the simple act of walking - from then on Zeno, limps!The obvious descendant of Zeno would be the many American novels told to a shrink, most notably Portnoy: the Confessions are ostensibly written as a document to present to an analyst (the echo of Augustine is obvious), much like Portnoy - but this does narrow the scope of The Confessions: they are an attempt to present a view of the world in a thimble, with none of the vast allusions and world of detail of Ulysses, none of the philosophical warfare of Magic Mountain (which Svevo references), and none of the exquisite attention to social conventions and nuances of Lost Time (though Proust may be echoed in the courtship scenes, with narrator the plaything of the 4 girls and a rival suitor - not sure if Svevo would have read Proust though). Svevo apparently befriended Joyce during the Trieste years, which obviously helped him establish a reputation beyond Italy - but his reputation does rest on this one peculiar novel.