Italo Calvino

Starred review from February 18, 2013
Acclaimed Italian author Calvino (1923–1985) is best known for his fables, stories, and novels, including If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Yet he was also a book editor, journalist, and WWII Resistance fighter. This first English translation of 650 letters spanning the period from the war years until his death include Calvino’s correspondence with writers Umberto Eco, Gore Vidal, Elsa Morante, and Primo Levi; directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Pier Paolo Pasolini; composer Luciano Berio; as well as mentors, critics, and others. Elegant and generous, the letters reveal Calvino’s insights on authorship (“the author... exists only in his works; outside them... he is an everyday guy, who is very careful not to ‘identify’ with an ideal character”), literature (“Romanticism, that great river of paradisiacal incontinence...”); the role of the critic; the influence of Roland Barthes; and tarot cards and comic strips on his work. The son of scientists, Calvino first studied agronomy, and his letters reflect these and other biographical details—his continuing sympathy toward the Italian Communist Party despite his defection in 1957, his move to Paris in 1967, and his comments on American, French, and Italian literature and society. In a letter to a journalist friend, he says that he’d like to teach “a way of looking... a way of being in the world.” These letters show he succeeded.

April 1, 2013

Calvino (1923-1985) is recognized as one of the most inventive storytellers of the 20th century. His celebrated fiction includes Invisible Cities; If On a Winter's Night a Traveler; Marcovaldo; and Mr. Palomar. This collection, the first in English, gives voice and witness to a vibrant mind intensely engaged in the literary and political future of postwar Italy and the history of ideas. Selected and translated from the Italian edition, the letters date from Calvino's late adolescence to months before his death. His prodigious reading and intellectual vigilance is evident in his correspondence with fellow writers, e.g., Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini, Primo Levi, Leonardo Sciascia, Umberto Eco, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and a host of Italian and foreign commentators. Highlights include Calvino's lengthy meditations on the role of the author in Italy's political and cultural sphere, which were often published in newspapers and magazines; his letter relinquishing membership in the Italian Communist Party is compelling. McLaughlin's (Italian studies, Univ. of Oxford) translation is award-winning; the extensive notes provide a model of masterful research. VERDICT Irresistible for Calvino readers.--Lonnie Weatherby, McGill Univ. Lib., Montreal

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