His first published stories, in the nineteen-forties, were about war and the horrors of the modern world by the fifties, he was transmuting these horrors into fables, fairy tales, and historical fictions. But, two years later, when the Germans occupied Italy, he left school and fought for the Resistance. ![]() When Calvino enrolled in the agriculture department at the University of Turin, in 1941, he seemed destined to spend his life grafting one marvellous thing onto another. Shortly after his birth, the family returned to Italy, where they divided their time between his father’s floriculture station, in the seaside town of San Remo, and a country home sheltered by woods. He was born a hundred years ago in Cuba, the eldest son of a wandering Italian botanist and her agronomist husband. Italo Calvino was, word for word, the most charming writer to put pen to paper in the twentieth century. When you finished, you were surprised to find that the story, burning with passion and conquest, had left you with a sensation of grief. You bought the book and took it home, where you consumed it ravenously, ignoring the lights and the pings from your phone. The clerk cleared her throat to indicate that the store was closing. And the brawny man in the camel-hair coat, weighing this season’s rival political memoirs-what crimes had he committed? The woman with the glasses there, her hands fluttering above a table of slim translations-you could imagine the spells she might cast. You looked around the bookstore and you saw it through the story’s eyes. The villains were not evil but merely small-minded. The maidens were neither cruel nor insipid but daring, principled, and compassionate. The heroes were warmhearted, a little bumbling. Read our reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction, updated every Wednesday.ĭespite the otherworldliness of the story, its characters lived close to you somehow. Or it was a book that opened by addressing you, the Reader, instantly transforming you into both a character and the narrator’s confidant: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Or it was a book called “ Invisible Cities,” in which the Venetian merchant Marco Polo described to Kublai Khan the far-away lands of his empire, and, as you turned the pages, the spires and domes of unreal cities rose and fell before your eyes. ![]() It was a book called “ The Castle of Crossed Destinies,” about men and women who, having been mysteriously struck dumb, were using packs of tarot cards to describe the adventures that had befallen them. With your thumb, you flipped through the first few pages and, with the practiced efficiency of someone who never has enough time, you determined what the book was about. The author was Italo Calvino, whose name conjured up some vague impressions-an Italian who had risen to prominence after the Second World War, a writer of stories within stories. You reached for the book you had spotted. The other customers were leafing through books lifted from the great pyramids of new releases on the front table. ![]() Without thinking, you walked into the store. Your eye lingered on its pure-white cover and on a curious shape cut into it. But, not long ago, the sight of a particular book made you pause. ![]() You pass it on your walk to work in the mornings, and on your walk home in the evenings, and although you sometimes admire the clever geometries of its window display, rarely do you take a closer look. The bookstore in your neighborhood sits on a busy corner.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |