Italo Calvino was an Italian writer and journalist. His best-known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Cosmicomics is a collection of twelve short stories by Italo Calvino first published in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. The stories were originally published between 1964 and 1965 in the Italian periodicals Il Caffè and Il Giorno. Each story takes a scientific theory, and builds an imaginative story around it. An always-extant being called Qfwfq explicitly narrates all of the stories save two. Every story is a memory of an event in the history of the universe.
If on a winter's night a traveler is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter's night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader ("you") finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1981.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Vidal was heavily involved in politics, and unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives, and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate.
Invisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.
The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
Myra Breckinridge is a 1968 satirical novel by Gore Vidal written in the form of a diary. Described by the critic Dennis Altman as "part of a major cultural assault on the assumed norms of gender and sexuality which swept the western world in the late 1960s and early 1970s", the book's major themes are feminism, transsexuality, American expressions of machismo and patriarchy, and deviant sexual practices, as filtered through an aggressively camp sensibility. The controversial book is also "the first instance of a novel in which the main character undergoes a clinical sex-change". Set in Hollywood in the 1960s, the novel also contains candid and irreverent glimpses into the machinations within the film industry.
William Fense Weaver was an English language translator of modern Italian literature.
Mr. Palomar is a 1983 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. Its original Italian title is Palomar. In an interview with Gregory Lucente, Calvino stated that he began writing Mr. Palomar in 1975, making it a predecessor to earlier published works such as If on a winter's night a traveler. Mr. Palomar was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1985.
Under the Jaguar Sun is a collection of three short stories by Italo Calvino. The stories were to have been in a book entitled I cinque sensi. Calvino died before writing the stories dedicated to vision and touch. In the Italian edition the stories are ordered as follows: Il nome, il naso; Sotto il sole giaguaro; and Un re in ascolto. The titular story Sotto il sole giaguaro was originally published as Sapore sapere in the June 1982 edition of FMR, an Italian magazine.
The Baron in the Trees is a 1957 novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. Described as a conte philosophique and a metaphor for independence, it tells the adventures of a boy who climbs up a tree to spend the rest of his life inhabiting an arboreal kingdom. Calvino published a new version of the novel in 1959.
The Witness is the name of at least three fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Of these, the first was published by Timely Comics in the 1940s and the final two by its successor company, Marvel Comics.
t zero is a 1967 collection of short stories by Italian author Italo Calvino. The title story is based on a particularly uncertain moment in the life of a lion hunter. This second in time, t0, is considered by the hunter against known previous seconds and hypothetical future seconds
Duluth is a 1983 novel by Gore Vidal. He considered it one of his best works, as did Italo Calvino, who wrote, "Vidal's development...along that line from Myra Breckinridge to Duluth, is crowned with great success, not only for the density of comic effects, each one filled with meaning, not only for the craftsmanship in construction, put together like a clock-work which fears no word processor, but because this latest book holds its own built-in theory, that which the author calls 'après post-structuralism'. I consider Vidal to be a master of that new form which is taking shape in world literature and which we may call the hyper-novel or the novel elevated to the square or the cube."
The Nonexistent Knight is an allegorical fantasy novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, first published in Italian in 1959 and in English translation in 1962.
The Complete Cosmicomics is a 2009 book that collects almost all of the Cosmicomic stories by Italian postmodern writer Italo Calvino.
A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or particularly noteworthy. What makes a book "classic" is a concern that has occurred to various authors ranging from Italo Calvino to Mark Twain and the related questions of "Why Read the Classics?" and "What Is a Classic?" have been essayed by authors from different genres and eras. The ability of a classic book to be reinterpreted, to seemingly be renewed in the interests of generations of readers succeeding its creation, is a theme that is seen in the writings of literary critics including Michael Dirda, Ezra Pound, and Sainte-Beuve. These books can be published as a collection or presented as a list, such as Harold Bloom's list of books that constitute the Western canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature from all traditions, such as the Chinese classics or the Indian Vedas.
The Literature of Exhaustion is a 1967 essay by the American novelist John Barth sometimes considered to be the manifesto of postmodernism.
La Rondinaia is a villa in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast in southern Italy.