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nearit's review against another edition
4.0
A useful guide to the arguments and politics that informed the bold, clear lines of Calvino's prose. If I'm honest, though, I'm mostly just envious of how blunt Calvino is with his contemporaries.
quintusmarcus's review
5.0
Italo Calvino's letters are great fun to read. He had something to say about all the literary stars of the day, and his sometimes ascerbic comments are always illuminating. He discusses his own works, often in much detail but, at least in this selection of letters, just a few of his works (Invisible Knight, Cloven Viscount, and his stories) get most of the attention. I was very disappointed that my personal favorite, Mr. Palomar, only appeared in one or two letters.
Because I am so fond of his collection, Italian Folktales, I appreciated the great number of letters in which he talks about sources. He discusses at length the challenges he faces in assembling the collection:
"There is the problem of the collection of the material which for some regions has already been published and for others is almost non-existent. There is the question of the dialects. There is the problem when assembling material from different collectors of giving a stylistic unity, and unity of method to the book. Some time ago one of our colleagues sent us a proposal from Prof. Vidossi for a volume containing the Tuscan, Umbrian, and Veneto tales in the original and the ones from the other regions in Italian translation. But Einaudi’s intention is to do something that is as far removed as possible from a university text-book, but which is instead fresh reading for a non-academic public, though carried out with all the criteria of Italian folklore research. Consequently, Einaudi’s view is that the publishing house should take responsibility itself for the editing of the work, making use of the advice and material offered by specialists, and should “unify” the volume. In a word, keeping a sound philological basis but adopting criteria that are essentially artistic. In fact he actually proposed that I—poor me!—should take on this work of unification, in other words choosing from amongst the variant versions, translating where things need to be translated, rewriting in Italian things that have already been written down."
Poor me, indeed! I had never really thought about what went into the assembly of that collection. One has to wonder, will Italian Folktales be his great legacy? Will people still read his novels a century from now, or will they be dismissed as mid-twentieth century fantastic literature, derivative of greater writers like Borges? Only time will tell.
In the meantime though, these letters are very enjoyable to read: the products of a highly creative and humane intellect.
Because I am so fond of his collection, Italian Folktales, I appreciated the great number of letters in which he talks about sources. He discusses at length the challenges he faces in assembling the collection:
"There is the problem of the collection of the material which for some regions has already been published and for others is almost non-existent. There is the question of the dialects. There is the problem when assembling material from different collectors of giving a stylistic unity, and unity of method to the book. Some time ago one of our colleagues sent us a proposal from Prof. Vidossi for a volume containing the Tuscan, Umbrian, and Veneto tales in the original and the ones from the other regions in Italian translation. But Einaudi’s intention is to do something that is as far removed as possible from a university text-book, but which is instead fresh reading for a non-academic public, though carried out with all the criteria of Italian folklore research. Consequently, Einaudi’s view is that the publishing house should take responsibility itself for the editing of the work, making use of the advice and material offered by specialists, and should “unify” the volume. In a word, keeping a sound philological basis but adopting criteria that are essentially artistic. In fact he actually proposed that I—poor me!—should take on this work of unification, in other words choosing from amongst the variant versions, translating where things need to be translated, rewriting in Italian things that have already been written down."
Poor me, indeed! I had never really thought about what went into the assembly of that collection. One has to wonder, will Italian Folktales be his great legacy? Will people still read his novels a century from now, or will they be dismissed as mid-twentieth century fantastic literature, derivative of greater writers like Borges? Only time will tell.
In the meantime though, these letters are very enjoyable to read: the products of a highly creative and humane intellect.
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