An Absurd Vice, the critical biography of Cesare Pavese by his friend and fellow-writer Davide Lajolo, has been celebrated in Italy since its publication there in 1960. With well-balanced affection and blame, it presents a portrait of the prize-winning author of the House on the Hill, Work Wearies and other books of fiction and poetry, dedicated editor at the Einaudi Publishing House, and renowned translator of such classics as David Copperfield and Moby-Dick, who was yet unable to shake what he ruefully called his “absurd vice”– a lifelong obsession with suicide.…