ITALY: Intimate Episodes

In Rome, where housing is just as scarce as in New York, London, Paris,* Moscow, Cape Town or Shanghai, one Carlo Levi, an Italian writer, painter and sculptor, was in a universal predicament. His landlord wanted to throw him out of his studio in the venerable Palazzo Altieri, so the place could be remodeled into smaller apartments. Levi, of course, had nowhere else to go.

The landlord decorated the studio's marble staircase with ripe garbage, cut off water and telephone service, and finally tried to budge Levi by painting insulting inscriptions on the studio walls. Samples: "Carlo Levi is a bandit...

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