Six Memos for the Next Millennium
by Italo Calvino
2020-12-29 23:58:00
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
by Italo Calvino
2020-12-29 23:58:00
The celebrated author of Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities shares his âbrilliant, original approach to literatureâ in these late-career lectures (San Francisco Chronicle). At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on his Charles El...
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The celebrated author of Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities shares his âbrilliant, original approach to literatureâ in these late-career lectures (San Francisco Chronicle). At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on his Charles Eliot Norton poetry lectures to be delivered the following year at Harvard University. The six planned lectures would define the qualities he most valued in writing, and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Six Memos for the Next Millennium collects the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature, but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one âmemoâ each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity, drawing examples from his vast knowledge of myth, folklore, and works both ancient and modern. Written in the mid-1980s, these lectures have proven to be astonishingly prescient as we have entered Calvinoâs ânext millenniumâ. âOne of the most rigorously presented and beautifully illustrated critical testaments in all of literature.ââBoston Globe âA key to Calvinoâs own work and a thoroughly delightful and illuminating commentary on some of the worldâs greatest writing.ââSan Francisco Chronicle
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