Italo Calvino

[Stewart]

Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).

His style is not easily classified; much of his writing has an air of the fantastic reminiscent of fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called "postmodern", reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled "magical realist", others fables, others simply "modern".

Twelve years before his death, he joined, on invitation, the Oulipo group of experimental writers. He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."

Lionised in Britain and America, he was, at the time of his death, the most-translated contemporary Italian writer.

RELATED THREADS

• The Castle Of Crossed Destinies

RELATED LINKS

• Italo Calvino on Wikipedia
• Italo Calvino Resource
• Outside The Town Of Malbork

[Stewart]

Calvino is a writer I want to like more than I do. My first experience of him, as I'm sure it will be for many, was reading If On A Winter's Night A Traveler and being simply caught up in that opening ("You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate."), a book that promised - and delivered - to take the reader on a true adventure.

Since then, I've sampled a few other of his books, notably The Castle Of Crossed Destinies, Invisible Cities, and Mr Palomar, none of them really giving me the pleasure that If On A... had.

The Castle Of Crossed Destinies I've created a thread for already. Invisible Cities - or what I read of it anyway - was a beautiful barrage of imagined places but I found myself easily exhausted by it. Similarly, Mr Palomar.

I think I'm due a revisit to If On A..., perhaps to reignite a taste for Calvino.

Anyone had better success in reading Calvino?

[Heteronym]

I'm slowly collecting all his novels and short-stories to make 2009 my Official Italvo Calvino Year.

He's an undefinable writer who's dabbled in realism, historical fantasy, urban fantasy, science-fiction and experimental writing. I had no idea he had joined the Oulipo, but it makes sense.

I've read Marcovaldo, which I've enjoyed, and Invisible Cities, which I wanted to have enjoyed more.

Of his non-fiction I've read The Uses of Literature, a collection of essays about all things literary, full of interesting ideas; and Why Read the Classics?, which rivals Borges' Personal Library in terms of how much love Calvino pours on his favorite writers.

[Daniel del Real]

A few days from the start of International Fairbook in Guadalajara. Italy has been invited this year, and Italo Calvino will be celebrated as a main figure from italian literature from 20th century.
So, I started trying to find who was this intriguing man.
I read The Cloven Viscount a few days ago, and I found it fascinating and delightful. This short story in the form of a fable, goes beyond the story and goes deep philosopically. It was a great start for me, and I guess that I will be doing the same thing than Heteronym and make 2009, Italo Calvino's year.

[titania7]

Stewart, you asked if anyone has had more success with Calvino
than you did. Well, my favorite Calvino book, of the work I've read thus far, is his collection of Italian Folk Tales. You might not
think you would like something like this; but, I must say, these
short, fable-like stories are absolute gems!! They are not mere
diamonds-in-the-rough . With titles such as "The Dragon with
Seven Heads," "The Dragon and the Enchanted Filly," (I love
stories about dragons, by the way), "The Queen of the Three Mountains of Gold," and "The King's Daughter Who Could Never
Get Enough Figs," how can you lose?? They are so magical and whimsical, so full of fun and wit. So....are you hooked yet? I actually got my first copy of these Italian Folk Tales from the library. Then, I was so beguiled by them I simply had to have my own copy.

On a less whimsical note, Heteronym will be pleased to hear that
I just picked up Calvino's The Uses of Literature at a library sale (for 75 cents!!). What did you think of this book, Heteronym? Is it as
good as it looks? I haven't actually sat down and started
reading one of the essays yet, but it appears that Calvino may offer
many brilliant insights in regard to the relationship between literature
and such thought-provocative subjects as science, philosophy,
and politics. Am I right?


~Titania

PS Daniel, I will definitely see if I can procure a copy of
"The Cloven Viscount." It sounds like something I would
love!


"The more enlightened our houses are, the more their
walls ooze ghosts."
~Italo Calvino

[titania7]

Calvino Update:

I just read the essay, "Why Read the Classics?," from the book,
The Uses of Literature. Everyone who loves books, particularly
classic books, must run out and get a copy of The Uses of Literature immediately. Calvino's thoughts are not merely brilliant;
they are profound. There are some writers you read whose
patterns of thought you simply cannot relate to--they may be
good, and clever, and a bunch of other things, but you're never
able to honestly connect with what they have to say.
Calvino is different....at least for me.

I particularly like what he says about reading the classics in one's youth.

"....reading in youth can be rather unfruitful, due to impatience,
distraction, inexperience with the product's 'instructions for
use,' and inexperience in life itself."

I, for instance, began reading Russian literature at a rather young
age. And, even though I developed a passion for Dostoevsky,
I am now cognizant of how inadequately I most likely absorbed
his deep ideas and psychological insights. Ditto on Flaubert.
Yes, I thought Madame Bovary was a masterpiece, but did
I see it as more than a beautifully written book??

Calvino strongly supports the idea of re-visiting "the classics,"
aptly pointing out:

"...Even if the books have remained the same (though they do
change, in the light of an altered historical perspective),
we have most certainly changed, and our encounter will
be an entirely new thing."

He sums his thoughts on this matter best with this sentence:

"Every rereading of a classic is as much a voyage of discovery
as the first reading."

In this single essay, there are references to everyone from
Dickens to Dostoevsky to Turgenev to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. It is a book-lover's dream. I can't wait to read
more of this book. I see there's even a chapter--or "guide" as Calvino calls it, to The Charterhouse of Parma. Marvelous.

~Titania

PS I'd still like your thoughts on The Uses of Literature,
Heteronym .

[nnyhav]

Italian Folk Tales is the one thing by Calvino I haven't yet read. It's been residing on the Bookshelf of Good Intentions for years now ...

titania, you may want to look into Calvino's fellow Oulipoan Georges Perec's 53 Days: incomplete, but the title refers to how long it took Stendhal to write Charterhouse.

[titania7]

Nnyhav,
Many thanks for the George Perec recommendation. I haven't yet
explored any of Perec's work though he's definitely on my
to-be-read list of authors. I had no idea that Stendhal wrote
The Charterhouse of Parma in just 53 days. That's just a wee bit intimidating . Ok. I admit it, I'm jealous!! As a writer who oft-times
struggles to write three pages in a day, it isn't easy to accept the idea of someone writing a book like Parma in less than 2 months.
I console myself a bit when I remember the days when I was able
to turn out 20 or 30 pages in a number of hours. However, since the quality of this work was/is dubious, I'm not yet patting myself on the back .

I sincerely hope you'll browse through some of those Italian Folk Tales soon. You could probably read many of them in five minutes.
And I would love to hear your remarks on them. I have the utmost
respect for your thoughts and ideas on literature, nnyhav.

~Titania

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by titania7

PS I'd still like your thoughts on The Uses of Literature,
Heteronym .

I always thought The Uses of Literature was the English version of Calvino's Una Pietra Sopra: instead it seems to collect essays from this book and Why Read the Classics? You people are being short-changed and don't even know it

[promtbr]

...........

[miercuri]

I have only read The Castle of Crossed Destinies and Invisible Cities and was ambivalent towards both. I definitely need to read others before making up my mind. I have a feeling that he will really grow on me as I read more, and thankfully I have plenty to choose from. Any recommendations?

[Heteronym]

I've started my Official Italo Calvino Year with The Cloven Viscount. I plan to read all his (available in Portuguese) works of fiction by the end of this new year. That includes rereading a few.

[Bjorn]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

I've started my Official Italo Calvino Year with The Cloven Viscount. I plan to read all his (available in Portuguese) works of fiction by the end of this new year. That includes rereading a few.

I might join you at least part of the way; there's a brand new paperback issue out over here collecting The Cloven Viscount, The Baron In The Trees and The Nonexistant Knight in one volume.

[Mirabell]

Another one of the great writers I have yet to read. read nothing. partly because I wasn't sure where to start, partly because I heard he's worse in translation and I've always meant to kearn italian. i know a few phrases but then everybody does, right.

[titania7]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

Another one of the great writers I have yet to read. read nothing. partly because I wasn't sure where to start, partly because I heard he's worse in translation and I've always meant to kearn italian. i know a few phrases but then everybody does, right.

Mirabell,
I haven't read a vast amount of Calvino, but I did fall in love with his volume of Italian Folk Tales. If you enjoy fairy tales by such writers as the Brothers Grimm and/or Hans Christian Anderson, you would love these folktales. They're exquisitely written...and, well, positively magical!

(See my previous post in which I rhapsodized even more enthusiastically upon their magnificent merits ).

~Titania

[Stewart]

If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is probably the place to start. It just eases you into the book with its self-references.

I'll hopefully be giving him a bit more of a read too this year as Penguin are releasing a number of his titles in their Modern Classics range later this year.

[titania7]

I knew you would be the right person to answer Mirabell's inquiry, Stewart. And, keeping your recommendation in mind, I'm going to give On a Winter's Night, A Traveler a try, as well. Thus far, I've just thumbed through it but haven't yet really plunged in. It both looks and sounds fantastic! I suppose I'll simply have to add it to my ever-growing list of 2009 literary goals....

~Titania

[Galatea92]

A couple of books that haven't been mentioned:

Marcovaldo. Easily my favourite Calvino, it's a series of stories about an Italian everyman, Marcovaldo, and his family. Marcovaldo is like a folk tale character to whom unlucky things keep happening. It's very funny and quite moving in places.

Adam, One Afternoon. A collection of short stories. They're more straightforward than his novels, so those of you who don't like postmodernist messing around with narrative should have something to get your teeth into.

I'd also second Titania's recommendation of Italian Folk Tales. It's great fun.

And I must admit I loved the conceit of If on a winter's night. It's a very folk-taley conceit - all the stories within stories - but it also creates a wonderfully postmodern narrative. (For those of you who don't know, the conceit is that the narrator is searching for a book whose first lines began, 'If on a winter's night...'. In the copy he originally read, the text ended after a paragraph, so he's trying to find the full text. But instead of finding the completion of that one book, the narrator just keeps finding the beginnings of other books, and the novel is made up of all these beginnings of books.)

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by titania7

I knew you would be the right person to answer Mirabell's inquiry, Stewart. And, keeping your recommendation in mind, I'm going to give On a Winter's Night, A Traveler a try, as well. Thus far, I've just thumbed through it but haven't yet really plunged in. It both looks and sounds fantastic! I suppose I'll simply have to add it to my ever-growing list of 2009 literary goals....

~Titania

I would recommend Cosmicomics over If On a Winter's Night. Both are good, but I found my attention straying toward the end of the middle third of Winter's Night, whereas Cosmicomics I think I read from beginning to end in two sittings. And of the two, indeed of the three Calvino books that I've read, Comics is the one that holds a special place in my heart.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by titania7

I knew you would be the right person to answer Mirabell's inquiry, Stewart.

Na, not me. I've only read If On A Winter's Night A Traveler and The Castle Of Crossed Destinies.

I've attempted Mr Palomar and Invisible Cities, not getting very far with either.