These five words effectively summarize his own literary style. Light, quick, exact, visible, multiple - how well Calvino knew himself. The five essays that are included are “Lightness,” “Quickness,” “Exactitude,” “Visibility,” and “Multiplicity.” The quirky quality of Calvino’s essays is unintentionally signaled by the omission of the sixth essay promised by the title, on “Consistency.” It remained unwritten at the time of the author’s death in Siena shortly before his 62nd birthday in 1985. But it provides a brilliant, original approach to literature, a key to Calvino’s own work, and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the world’s greatest writing. It will be difficult for literary critics to apply it as a test of value or for aspiring writers to use it as a recipe for their own magical creations. (The book is marred only by the failure of Harvard University Press to credit Patrick Creagh’s excellent translation.)Ĭalvino’s formula is idiomatic and personal. These lectures, intended for presentation at Harvard University in 1985, are precisely worded, carefully crafted, beautifully illustrated examples of the literary essay and inspiring demonstrations of Calvino’s argument that writing should have the definition, luminescence, and perfection of structure of a crystal. In Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino, master of startling literary transformations in such works as Invisible Cities, Cosmicomics, and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, shares his personal alchemical formula for literary Gold. Harvard University Press 136 pages $12.95 The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1985–1986īy Italo Calvino translated by Patrick Creagh Writing as a Perfect Crystal Six Memos for the Next Millennium But I think I do still have some old reviews in a box. Maybe? That must have been around thirty years ago.
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I love that one! Can you send it to me?… The review, I mean.
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My favorite was Six Memos for the New Millennium. Oh, yes!… I used to review some of his books for the San Francisco Chronicle. One of my favorites is Italo Calvino, she said.