#Italo Calvino

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

I'm currently reading my first John Grisham novel (The Racketeer, hardcover published in 2012; I'm reading the paperback my former housemate left behind). Not my favorite genre (legal / crime thriller) and there are certain tropes and character broad strokes that don't appeal to me. But I can see why his books appeal to so many others...

Anyway -- One of the writing / style tricks he uses quite effectively is how he switches up the narrative tenses. He writes his protagonist's scenes in first person, present tense. He writes the protagonist's accomplices' scenes in third person, present tense. And he writes his antagonists' scenes in omniscient third person, past tense. So, yeah -- he wants you to empathize with the protagonist, and uses first person to get there, but not think of yourself as the protagonist (He puts in too much specific biographical detail for that).

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore), by Italo Calvino,* OTOH, is written in second person (you), and the protagonist is called Reader. That one, you are meant to imagine yourself in the story. But even there, Reader is a character.

*translated to English by William Weaver.

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

[davidhudson]

Italo Calvino, October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985.

[metaphrasis]

“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern? Every time I seek to relive the emotion of a previous reading, I experience different and unexpected impressions, and do not find again those of before. At certain moments it seems to me that between one reading and the next there is a progression: in the sense, for example, of penetrating further into the spirit of the text, or of increasing my critical detachment. At other moments, on the contrary, I seem to retain the memory of the readings of a single book one next to another, enthusiastic or cold or hostile, scattered in time without a perspective, without a thread that ties them together. The conclusion I have reached is that reading is an operation without object; or that its true object is itself. The book is an accessory aid, or even a pretext.”

— Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

[thebeautifulbook]

INVISIBLE CITIES by Italo Calvino. [San Diego: Harvest, 1972]

Art Binding by Dmitri Koutsipetsidis, He’s known for his great bindings on FRANKENSTEIN, THE WASTELAND, THE HOBBIT, THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

source — about the design

source — read

[garadinervi]

Italo Calvino. Guardare. Disegno, cinema, fotografia, arte, paesaggio, visioni e collezioni, Edited by Marco Belpoliti, «Oscar Moderni. Baobab», Mondadori, Milano, 2023 [Mutty, Castiglione delle Stiviere (MN)]

[dandelionjack]

WHAT IS A DREAM CITY? what it says on the tin — an urban environment that you have involuntarily visited multiple, repeated times in dreams. to be a dream city, it must not be a real-life place, whether one you have physically travelled to/lived in or one that you have seen videos of.

doesn’t need to look “alien”. mine, though some of the architecture is quite distinctive, resembles a southern european city, with most of the structures seeming 19th century

the storylines that play out and characters which feature may vary, but the setting crucially must remain the same or at least very similar. certain recurring locations must be present (buildings, streets, landmarks, a river, a bar — for me at least, but once again these locations could be anything in your personal experience).

you will find that, despite logically never having “been” here in reality, you always know where to go, as if you’re a long-term resident or at least a well-prepared tourist.

the public transport is usually weird. for me it’s mostly a winding system of subway networks, complex and misleading like a labyrinth, naturally. what’s a dream city without a maze

so, that’s enough detail for you to know which button to vote for by now. no nuance. either you drop by the dream city on the regular or you don’t.

reblog for reach. and no i don’t have a clue on what i’m planning to do with the results, thanks for asking

[exhaled-spirals]

— Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

[fuoridalcloro]

Non credo a niente che sia facile, rapido, spontaneo, improvvisato, approssimativo. Credo alla forza di ciò che è lento, calmo, ostinato, senza fanatismi né entusiasmi. Non credo a nessuna liberazione, né individuale, né collettiva che si ottenga senza il costo d’un’autodisciplina, di un’autocostruzione, d’uno sforzo.

-Italo Calvino-

[kafkasapartment]

"Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."

Italo Calvino, “Invisible Cities”

[undinesea]

What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

Italo Calvino, from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

[arvtisticfra]

[infugacolbarone]

Amo soprattutto Stendhal perché solo in lui tensione morale individuale, tensione storica, slancio della vita sono una cosa sola, lineare tensione romanzesca.

Amo Hemingway perché è matter of fact, understatement, volontà di felicità, tristezza.

Amo Puskin perché è limpidezza, ironia e serietà.

Amo Stevenson perché pare che voli.

Amo Conrad perché naviga l’abisso e non ci affonda.

Amo Cechov perché non va più in là di dove va.

Amo Tolstoj perché alle volte mi pare d’essere lì lì per capire come fa e invece niente.

Amo Manzoni perché fino a poco fa l’odiavo.

Amo Flaubert perché dopo di lui non si può più pensare di fare come lui.

Amo Poe dello Scarabeo d’oro.

Amo Twain di Huckleberry Finn.

Amo Kipling dei Libri della Giungla.

Amo Nievo perché l’ho riletto tante volte divertendomi come la prima.

Amo Jane Austen perché non la leggo mai ma sono contento che ci sia.

Amo Gogol perché deforma con nettezza, cattiveria e misura.

Amo Dostoevskij perché deforma con coerenza, furore e senza misura.

Amo Balzac perché è visionario.

Amo Kafka perché è realista.

Amo Maupassant perché è superficiale.

Amo la Mansfield perché è intelligente.

Amo Fitzgerald perché è insoddisfatto.

Amo Radiguet perché la giovinezza non torna più.

Amo Svevo perché bisognerà pur invecchiare.

Amo…"

- Italo Calvino, dalla prefazione a "Perché leggere i classici"

[davidhudson]

Pier Paolo Pasolini and Italo Calvino.

[onenakedfarmer]

ITALO CALVINO If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.

[calliop-e]

Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities

[garadinervi]

Giulio Paolini, Untitled, (collage on paper), 1996 [Portrait of Italo Calvino taken by Sebastião Salgado; reproduction from Album Calvino, Edited by Luca Baranelli and Ernesto Ferrero, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 1995), p. 260] [Private collection. © Giulio Paolini / Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Torino]

Cover art for: Marco Belpoliti, L'occhio di Calvino, «Saggi» 805, Einaudi, Torino, 1996