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Serving Italo Calvino

Episode 1

I certainly do not widen too much if I say that is the Italo Calvino My favorite Italian writer.
It all started in 2003, the fourth high school, the Italian teacher assigns us The Nonexistent Knight Italo Calvino as a book for my Christmas holidays.
Caught in the library, read in an afternoon (November, for more. Other than waiting for the Christmas holidays ...). It was not love at first sight. The book was funny, ironic, interesting, just the opposite of the usual mattonazzi you trimmed to school. And believe me, I do not extent, prevent, or rather, if I had to read a book I did not know, or an author who did not know, I thought that maybe I found something new on which to throw. The disappointment came later, on time: the fame that hovers over the required reading, in my experience, it's totally deserved.
Here, Italo Calvino was an exception.

In 2003, it was love at first sight and ended there. In 2007 I read
The Cloven Viscount, an interesting work on the duality but, again, I do not fully captured. A few pages of writing light and enjoyable, a nice story in a style reminiscent of The Nonexistent Knight , but it lacks that something that captures ...

Then in 2008, turning in a bookstore, I stopped in front of If a winter's night a traveler , Italo Calvino. And I remember the counsel of Professor of the high school team (her), that there had always strongly recommended reading. Why not? , I tell myself, and I take it.
I get home, I sit, I admire my last purchase with the cover work by Fausto Melotti - at the time still did not know who he was, we did not come to school to study, let alone had no idea that Melotti and Calvin were friends. Now I know thanks to the Museo del Novecento Milan (by the way, visit it!), Where an exhibition of several works by sculptor ... including some of those ended up on the covers of the works of Calvin.
So I sat down and I open it:

You are about to start reading the new novel If a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino . Relax. Collect. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door, for there is always the television on. Tell others right away, "No, I do not want to watch TV!" Raise your voice, or I will not hear you, "I'm reading! I do not want to be disturbed, "Maybe they have not heard, with all that racket, speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel," Or if you do not say anything, we hope you'll be left in peace.
Get the most comfortable position: sitting, lying down, curled up, lying down. Lying on your back, on her side, her belly. In an easy chair, sofa, rocking chair on the deck chair, the ottoman. Hammock if you have one. On the bed, of course, or in the bed. You can also put you upside down in yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.

Well, yes that there was love. I mean, who writes such a thing must be one that lives , experience Reading, who before being a writer is a reader and then know what they want from a book quality : why, chiariamolo now, when I read a book first, I expect quality. I am a reader
snob in the sense that snubs the much-vaunted best-seller (although sometimes indulge in reading some of these samples of sales) and I rode that these monsters are just doing the bulk of the turnover of the publishing houses, allowing them to publish even the most sophisticated works that would otherwise ... Greetings!

But this is not the point. The point is the shock. Because Calvin is one of those authors who either love them or hate them. So, belly, without escape. It sounds like a cliché, and in fact I would not say that it is not, but heck, that's it! It's like Paulo Coelho and Fyodor Dostoyevsky! Unlike many, I hate Dostevskij with all my might, while I love Coelho (OK, not madness, but I find his books ... intoxicating).
So now you can see on page 5, as the authors themselves, if they do for you or if you messed great.
Yes, I know I'm contradicting: slightly above what I wrote? Calvin in the first two books I was not captured 100%. True, but in 2003 I was not bitter I became a reader as in 2008, but most still do not know how or when it is born my setting for Calvin.
So Let's go in 2002. Second high school, a task in an Italian class. One of the tracks aimed to invent a result of the following passage:

One night, as usual, watched the sky with my telescope. I noticed that from a distant galaxy a hundred million light-years stuck a sign. It read: I saw you. I did the calculations quickly: the light of the galaxy had spent a hundred million years to reach up there and because they saw what was happening here with a hundred million years of delay, the time I had seen was back to two hundred million d ' years ago.
Before checking on my agenda to see what I had done that day, I was seized with a dreadful foreboding: its two hundred million years before or a day more or less a day, I had something happen that I had always tried to hide.

The light years from All cosmicomiche , Mondadori

not take much to figure out if a writer has the flash of genius. I see me, Calvin, with a mischievous smile on his lips just mentioned, who wrote this episode. A great writer you recognize it even when you do not like his book, which is exactly what has happened to me with The Castle of Crossed Destinies . The basic idea (the castle where they meet the travelers who, unable to speak, tell their stories through tarot cards, fitting together in an ingenious way to define who is a euphemism) is original, and its development to joint crazy in a good way, that which fails is the repetitiveness of the work. The book I did not like, but not the "I do not like" a book that is hurt in any of its aspects, no, because in this case is still my admiration for the idea!

I feel a little 'the champion of its own myth, you know, those who defend a sword-style "with ham on the eyes" - any any doodle. Even those who a child of six years would make them better. But no matter, so I'm happy.
And to think I was playing with the idea of \u200b\u200btalking about Ferragus , by Honore de Balzac (with Calvin that has to do, before you wonder what enters with each other)! It means that it will be for next time.

To be continued ...