Italo Calvino: Tales From the Cities

Recently, I wrote a guest review of The Long Goodbye for the website Booksellers Without Borders. I was pleased with my submission, yet looking back on my introduction to the piece, I found myself incredibly harsh with my critiques of the memoir industry. Granted, I was careful to specify that my arguments were directed at certain memoir sub-genres, and certainly not the entire category. Meghan O'Rourke definitely amazed me with her work, and I recently finished Italo Calvino's Hermit In Paris: Autobiographical Writings. With Calvino's work, even more potential disclaimers arose, at least initially. I've been an admirer of his fiction for many years, so it's (personally) odd that I haven't read his non-fiction writings beyond Six Memos For the Next Millennium. While this is an older collection, a lot of regarded writers have had their personal writings published, sometimes posthumously, with those volumes sometimes seeming like no more than collectible items for completists, rather than worthy additions to a given canon.

However, I was grateful to find that none of those initial worries ended up applying to Hermit In Paris. It's a collection of autobiographical sketches from magazines, translated/transcribed interviews, and the occasional insight into his writing process and political leanings. The majority of the pages are devoted to his then-unpublished "American Diary 1959-1960," an illuminating, vastly entertaining account of his first American visit. In Six Memos, Calvino shared his views on the few qualities of fiction that have multiple impacts. As I've mentioned previously, his enthusiasm for the subject permeated that text, creating a work that was a combination of the technical and the joyous. In Hermit In Paris, Calvino's non-fiction style goes in a different direction. While there's no doubt that he feels passionately about his work and life, most of the topics are explored in a very matter-of-fact tone. For someone noted for grand, fabulist novels and stories, it's interesting to note how his takes on reality are equally as grounded. At the same time, the wealth of information and detail are gripping, with no need for stylistic embellishments.

"American Diary 1959-1960" is the heart of the collection, but not for the obvious reasons. His entries provide sketches of mid-twentieth century America that seem to fit the understood mental images that people have of that era, even if he or she didn't live through it. However, being an Italian visitor, his descriptions are intended to be neutral, even with his accounts focusing on the positive and the negative. He's looking at the country through new eyes. Some of the scenes and writings apply perfectly to today's American landscape, but having them exposed back then was probably jarring.

"In the land of consumption where everything must be thrown away so you can rush and buy new goods, in the land of standardized production, one learns, surprisingly, that there is a whole underworld market of goods which no one would ever imagine could be bought or sold in America. There are huge stores of second-rate goods, as in the Italian area of Chicago, which are the same as the stores downtown except that the goods are rejects which exude an air of poverty even when they are new (Calvino 71)."

I'm not trying to fit his older passages to modern times, but really, his accounts of some Texas citizens could nicely apply to the likes of Rick Perry and his supporters:

"What comes over is an impression of a country in uniform, these middle-class families marching in formation all wearing stetsons and fringed jackets, proudly displaying their practicality and anti-intellectualism which has developed into their mythology, fanaticism, and alarming belligerence (Calvino 105)."

Arguably the most famous and stirring accounts in the American diaries are Calvino's travels to Montgomery, Alabama. He witnessed the most savage examples of American racism, and depicted it honestly. Some of the most shameful acts in American history are written about without moralizing or grandiose images. These accounts and images are painfully well-known, but coming from the voice of an outsider who's witnessing it firsthand makes the racism, segregation, and violence even more shocking.

"This is a day that I will never forget as long as I live. I have seen what racism is, mass racism, accepted as one of a society's fundamental rules. I was present at one of the first episodes of mass struggle by the Southern blacks: and it ended in defeat. I don't know if you are aware that after decades of total immobility black protests began right here, in the worst segregationist State in the country: some were even successful, under the leadership of Martin Luther King, a Baptist minister, advocate of non-violent protest. That is why I came here to Montgomery, the day before yesterday, but I did not expect to find myself right in the middle of these crucial days of struggle (Calvino 111)."

"This famous Southern aristocracy gives me the impression of being uniquely stupid in its continual harking back to the glories of the Confederacy; this Confederate patriotism which survives intact after a century, as though they were talking of things from their youth, in the tone of someone who is confident you share their emotions, is something which is more unbearable than ridiculous (Calvino 116)."



In terms of this essay, it's difficult to make such a vast transition from Calvino's sobering accounts of the segregated South to his more personal writings, but his detailed autobiographical chapters are insightful. Some of the information is repeated multiple times (his youth, his parents' occupations, his growth as a writer), since some of the pieces are interviews, but for the most part, every piece provides a wonderful look at his views. His travels, embrace and rejection of Communism, and fighting in the Italian Resistance are detailed honestly, but some of his best quotations come in abstract forms. In "Political Autobiography Of a Young Man," he states his views on literature in a global community, hypotheses that, again, apply to our modern times without being an act of "picking and choosing" statements that just happen to apply to the twenty-first century; instead, these are the views of a keen mind in an expanding world.

"I would like to point out here at least two things which I have believed in throughout my career and continue to believe in. One is the passion for a global culture, and the rejection of the lack of contact caused through excessive specialization; I want to keep alive an image of culture as a unified whole, which is composed of every aspect of what we know and do, and in which the various discourses of every area of research and production become part of that general discourse which is the history of humanity, which we must manage to seize and develop ultimately in a human direction. (And literature should of course be in the middle of these different languages and keep alive the communication between them.)(Calvino 155)"

Calvino is also very candid about his own work, much along the same lines as his views on future literature in Six Memos. Many authors, past and present, seem to take no middle ground in discussing their own works: they have a tendency to be overtly dismissive of how their literature works, or they can be unnecessarily overwrought. Calvino seems to know that his canon has its ups and downs, and regards his critics openly, rather than spitefully.

"The few critics who have been unfavourable are those who intrigue me most, the ones from whom I expect more: however, I have not been lucky enough to have received a negative critique which is both serious and in-depth, one which teaches me useful things. I did receive an article by Enzo Giachino, when The Path to the Spiders' Nests came out, a total, absolute dismissal of the book, a real hatchet-job, but also extremely witty, which is perhaps one of the best articles written about my books, one of the few which every so often I like to reread, but not even that taught me anything really: it attacked only external aspects of the novel, which I could have improved by myself (Calvino 8-9)."

And even in the most metaphysical atmospheres, he manages to make a description of his writing honest and true:

"My desk is a bit like an island: it could just as well be in some other country as here. And besides, cities are turning into one single city, a single endless city where the differences which once characterized each of them are disappearing. This idea, which runs through my book Invisible Cities, came to me from the way that many of us now live: we continually move from one airport to another, to enjoy a life that is almost identical no matter what city you find yourself in (Calvino 168-169)."

Hermit In Paris is one of the rare essay collections that works on its own, being accessible to someone unfamiliar with Italo Calvino's fiction. But then again, non-fiction and fiction collections seem to go hand in hand for fans of a given writer (for example: would someone who has not read John Cheever's fiction be inclined to pick up The Journals of John Cheever? That's unlikely). The essays provide their own merit, and are not just a random assemblage of posthumous writings. These are excellent examples of an intellectual mind that navigates fiction and sociology with ease. Given that idea, doing a concrete "review" of Hermit In Paris is almost impossible; one is either going to agree or disagree with his opinions. I would assume that most Calvino readers have already read this work, but also, for anyone curious who consumes political and personal essays, its admirable to have a book that manages to stand on its own merit, rather than being an add-on to a diverse bibliography.

Work Cited:
Calvino, Italo. Hermit In Paris: Autobiographical Writings. Copyright 2003 by the Estate of Italo Calvino. Translation copyright 2003 by Jonathan Cape.

Lunar Fields

(Note: Although the story mentioned is available for free online--see the link below--I intentionally left the major parts of the story vague in the interest of analysis. My hope is that you read it before getting into my thoughts.)

In a wonderful example of perfect timing, the February 23rd issue of The New Yorker published a previously untranslated story by Italo Calvino, entitled "The Daughters Of the Moon." Since my last post was a look at If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, I was excited to see some new material (new in the sense of "available," since Calvino has been gone since 1985), doubled by the fact that I've only read novels and essays written by him. I've been meaning to get into his available short stories, a format that, at first assumption, would be among the better showcases of his style. Since Invisible Cities and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler are composed of short, vibrant chapters, it only seems natural that he would be able to pack a lot of imagery into a story that stands as its own piece. Besides, it would be wrong to look at just a single chapter of a Calvino novel, since each one is connected (almost scientifically) as more than the sum of its parts.

The word I used above, imagery, can sometimes be an easy go-to placeholder in literary criticism. However, it applies perfectly to "The Daughters Of the Moon." Calvino creates acute landscape descriptions, including a New York skyline that is minimalist, yet tells a lot given the story's structure:

"These cities grew in approximately the same places as our cities do now, however different the shape of the continents was. There was even a New York that in some way resembled the New York familiar to all of you, but was much newer, or, rather, more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand-new toothbrush."

A passage like this highlights Calvino's primary designations as a fabulist and a storyteller. "The Daughters Of the Moon" is narrated by a first person narrator, but one who, while involved personally in the events, remains as detached as possible, remaining confused at best, at least until the climax. In the future, the moon, with its age and meteoric erosions, does not fit in with the shiny, consumeristic society to which we're accustomed. The titular daughters of the moon, the almost fairy-like nude women who attempt to halt the moon's destruction. However, even they are not detached from the problems of rampant consumerism, which is a prevailing metaphor in the story, a metaphor that seems drastically different than the Calvino I'm familiar with:

"Everything was scattered on the grass around the bench: her clothes, a stocking and shoe here and the others there, her earrings, necklace, and bracelets, purse and shopping bag with the contents spilled out in a wide arc, and countless packages and goods, almost as if the creature had felt herself called on her way back from a lavish shopping spree and had dropped everything, realizing that she had to free herself of all objects and signs that bound her to the earth, and she was now waiting to be assumed into the lunar sphere."

As the passages I've cited hint, the story reads almost like a science-fiction piece, in addition to the metaphoric shame of consumerism and rape of the earth, which comes to a head in the stunning final paragraph. Since so much of the planet has been changed since the advent of industry, once the technology is available, would humans attempt to change the features of outer space? This also reminded me of the ideas of a vastly different writer, George Carlin, who more or less hinted at the same themes, imagining the colonization of space, complete with microwave hotdogs and trying to explain to extra-terrestrials the logistics behind embarrassing human behaviors.

Of course, Calvino is not without hope. As the daughters of the moon attempt to salvage the lunar destruction, by sheer magic (or so it seems), the problems begin to right themselves, both physically and socially:

"Following this moon that had been saved from the scrap heap, all the things and all the people who had been resigned to being tossed in a corner started on the road again."

Thus far, I have not formed any real opinions on the story itself. I found it beautifully written, futuristically atmospheric, but was somehow left feeling that there was more that could have been expanded. "The Daughters Of the Moon" reads as if it could have been a chapter in one of Calvino's novels, a more modern take on a city from Invisible Cities. Perhaps I'm committing a faux pas and not taking the story at face value, combined with the fact that I have not read other Calvino stories. However, one of the passages of the story serves as a wonderful metaphor for this new English-language addition to Calvino's canon, especially given its form as a story as opposed to a novel. I'll close with it:

"This was the landscape that we hardly managed to glimpse before the sphere swiftly receded into the sky, and the more minute details were lost in a general impression of freshness and lushness. It was dusk; the contrasts of the colors were fading into a vibrant chiarscuro; the lunar fields and woods were now just barely visible countours on the taut surface of the shining globe."

Concentrate. Relax. Dispel Every Other Thought.

Note: The title comes from the second sentence of the first chapter of If On a Winter's Night a Traveler.
"Whatever it may be, this is a novel where, once you have got into it, you want to go forward, without stopping (Calvino 76)."

I began this blog nearly a full year ago. My first essays consisted of some shaky (although well-intentioned) analyses of Italo Calvino's Six Memos For the Next Millennium and Invisible Cities (click here for that effort...there are a few errors on the novel's meaning, but for the most part, my literary theory heart was in the right place). Just recently, I finished Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, which is generally tied with Invisible Cities when his most influential works are discussed. Both novels have their vast differences, but both have writing, reading, and storytelling studies as their primary sources. I cannot believe that it has taken me this long to read If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and furthermore I cannot believe that it never appeared on any syllabus I had in college.

One of my biggest sources of irritation is the sheer number of books available on publishing and writing, specifically books geared towards people who never write (or read, for that matter), but just might (in the hopes of the publisher, who doesn't want the manual to be remaindered) have that "big bestseller" in them. Dozens of these books offer formulas and tips for writing bestsellers. While the great novels do have similarities, it's impossible to write a lasting work simply by punching in ideas into a sort of literary algorithm. These writing books should be replaced by If On a Winter's Night for two reasons. One, it contains intangible advice that cannot be found in any manual, and two, it would simply laugh in the face of anyone who takes them seriously.

The "plot" behind If On a Winter's Night is well known, so I won't spend much time on its tangible summary. Calvino introduces a second-person character ("You," the reader) who teams up with a young female reader, trying to solve a vast publishing mistake, one that quickly turns into a subtle love story (or, more appropriately, an attraction based on reading) and a literary conspiracy. Yes, this does sound like it could be the plot of a mindless bestseller. However, as Terrance at Blogsmos writes about the book:" If all you read is Clive Cussler adventures or Nora Roberts romances, this book will probably just frustrate the hell out of you." There are various "chapters" mixed in, each from different fictional novels, all in very different styles, each originating from publishing mishaps and lost, secret manuscripts that tie into what can be loosely identified as the actual story of the book. However, the beauty lies in the fact that there is no actual straightforward story. In the rare example of a book jacket description that is on the money, the back of my edition states: "Italy's most brilliant modern writer shows that the novel is capable of endless mutations."

I remember one of my teachers in college poking fun at the class for constantly mentioning Calvino's sheer enthusiasm in relation to Six Memos For the Next Millennium. This teacher mocked us, saying something along the lines of "Ohh, Calvino! He's so nice!" However, it happens to be one of Calvino's skills--few writers could have pulled off a serious, postmodern, intellectual novel about the benefits and trials of reading and writing, held together with the aforementioned enthusiasm. Calvino shows that it's possible to maintain intelligence and excitement in the same conversation. In the book, hardly three pages will go by without an amusing passage or a play on language:

"To open the gate for me there was the gravedigger I had already met at The Star of Sweden. 'I am looking for Mr. Kauderer,' I said to him.
He answered, 'Mr. Kauderer is not here. But since the cemetery is the home of those who are not here, come in (65)."

"Hold on a minute. Concentrate. Take all the information that has poured down on you at once and put it in order. A Polish novel. Then the book you began reading with such involvement wasn't the book you thought but was a Polish novel instead. That is the book you are now so anxious to procure. Don't let them fool you. Explain clearly the situation. 'No, actually I don't really give a damn about that Calvino any more. I started the Polish one and it's the Polish one I want to go on with. Do you have this Bazakbal book?'(28)

Another aspect of the book's brilliance is that the main discussions on writing and reading could go on for hundreds more pages. In one passage, Calvino offers a hypothetical look at a tormented writer and a productive writer. One would assume, based on the descriptions, that they would be very different. However, Calvino highlights the differences with similarities and contradictions, emotions and sketches that become interchangeable to the point that the two writers could easily be the same person. The passage below does not do this idea total justice, but it helps:

"She returns to the productive writer the tormented writer's novel in the productive writer's manner, and to the tormented writer the productive writer's novel in the tormented writer's manner. Both, seeing themselves counterfeited, have a violent reaction and rediscover their personal vein (175)."

If On a Winter's Night a Traveler closes with readers in a library, offering their various views on reading styles and what they personally pick up from a given book. This ending is nearly perfect, since throughout the book, both the reader and writer are shown as conflicted entities with endless dimensions, two groups of people who would not exist without the other. While I've mentioned the idea of contradictions, I'll close with one brief passage that, to me, seems to encapsulate a few of the book's arguments. In these few words, Calvino creates a possible summary, complete with the necessary contradictions. This is one of the few passages I've ever read that have stopped me in my tracks, so to speak.

"'With my spyglass I can observe a woman who is reading on a terrace in the valley,' I told her. 'I wonder if the books she reads are calming or upsetting.'
'How does the woman seem to you? Calm or upset?'
'Calm.'
'Then she reads upsetting books (192-3).'"

Work Cited:
Calvino, Italo. If On a Winter's Night a Traveler. Copyright 1979 by Giulo Einaudi Editore, S.p.A, Torino.
English translation copyright 1981 by Harcourt, Inc.

"Invisible Cities"--The Calvino Project Concluded

"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters (Calvino 145)."



This passage describes the city of Perinthia, one of the dozens laid out in Invisible Cities. Perinthia's foundations were drawn by the aforementioned astronomers, with the zodiac determining the placement of the city landmarks, and the gods determining the lives of the citizens. The passage also perfectly describes my analysis of Invisible Cities in conjunction with Six Memos For the Next Millennium. My literary calculations could very well be wrong, and perhaps the order of the book is reflected in the details.



Invisible Cities is a collection of city descriptions, fabled cities visited by Marco Polo, who is describing them to Kublai Khan. The variations are astounding, yet the underlying possibilities(explored in dialogues between the two men) are that Polo is either making up the cities as he goes along, or that he is describing the same place is an many different ways as he can. The cities are discussed in an average of two pages apiece, yet Calvino crafts in amazing scenery, distinct summaries of the citizens, and moods of either hope or despair (or both).



Having finally finished the book, I am happy to say that it was incredibly rewarding, and I cannot figure out how Calvino's deft combination of metaphor and fable didn't hook me in the first few attempts I took to read it. It is a title that requires multiple readings, which is always a good sign. With that being said, forgive me for not giving the metaphors (or large chunks of the novel for that matter) the attention they deserve. The idea behind this project was to see if Invisible Cities represented the themes of Six Memos. This is going to be done very basically, with select passages from the novel being compared with select passages from the essays. I briefly touched upon "Lightness" in my last post, so I will leave it alone for now. If I feel I've missed anything, I can always return to it in the future.

"Quickness": "...the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language (Calvino 45)."

I can find no better self-summary of Invisible Cities. If we momentarily disregard the idea that Polo describes the same place in a myriad of different ways, the above passage shows that Calvino perfected "quickness" in the novel. If "quickness" can be defined as the true bent of written language (just for example's sake), consider this sample from Invisible Cities:

"You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are (Calvino 13)."

Can you appreciate Calvino's literary quickness? Not a word is misplaced or casually tossed in. As we read, we're getting a workout. He quickly gives us a few descriptions that move rapidly, that are different, yet are importantly linked. It is an excellent example of communication between sharply different objects.

"Exactitude": "To my mind exactitude means three things above all: (1) a well-defined and well-calculated plan for the work in question; (2) an evocation of clear, incisive, memorable visual images; in Italian we have an adjective that doesn't exist in English, "icastico"; (3) a language as precise as possible both in choice of words and in expression of the subtleties of thought and imagination (Calvino 55-56)."

In this description (which, true to the title, is the most exact definition given by Calvino in all of Six Memos), the word that jumps out the most to me is "precise." As varied and layered as Invisible Cities is, there is a poetic feel to the precision of Calvino's language and imagery. The tale of Andria is an excellent example:

"In praising Andria's citizens for their productive industry and their spiritual ease, I was led to say: I can well understand how you, feeling yourselves part of an unchanging heaven, cogs in a meticulous clockwork, take care not to make the slightest change in your city and your habits. Andria is the only city I know where it is best to remain motionless in time (Calvino 150)." (emphasis mine)

Just like with "Quickness," this passage defines "Exactitude" in two ways, both with the overall description and my emphasized phrases. Calvino finds precision in the entire novel, and works it into the smallest places. "Cogs in a meticulous clockwork, take care not to make the slightest change in your city and your habits." Sure, a city like Andria doesn't bode well for free will, but the reader cannot help but appreciate the exactitude reflected. In fact, I feel that "precision" is a better word for the chapter, even though it's a sort of synonym.

"Visibility": "We may distinguish between two types of imaginative process: the one that starts with the word and arrives at the visual image, and the one that starts with the visual image and arrives at its verbal expression. The first process is the one that normally occurs when we read. For example, we read a scene in a novel or the report of some event in a newspaper and, according to the greater or lesser effectiveness of the text, we are brought to witness the scene as if it were taking place before our eyes, or at least to witness certain fragments or details of the scene that are singled out (Calvino 83)."

I have to say that I found the essay "Visibility" to be the most difficult one in Six Memos. While a few more readings of it would undoubtedly clear up most of the confusion, I will focus on this quote. I cannot think of a specific passage in Invisible Cities that would best highlight it. In fact, the entire novel itself can serve as the example. Any written fiction or narrative applies to this, according to Calvino. This takes on greater meaning when one takes into consideration both Invisible Cities and Calvino's admiration of fables. There's really nothing to add to this except appreciation of the cities unfolding magically from the words, in great detail, from the intangible atmospheres to the tallest buildings.

"Multiplicity": "Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function (Calvino 112)."

In this final chapter of Six Memos, Calvino quotes a couple of authors and discusses the ideas of literature being a sort of encyclopedia. I loved the above passage because it's a fitting end to my project. Again, I'm going to take Invisible Cities as a whole instead of selecting a specific passage. I wouldn't describe the novel as "overambitious," but I absolutely agree with the idea of "immeasurable goals." While the cities and the conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo end on the last page, it's impossible to imagine Invisible Cities as having a literal ending. The two men converse as if their having an infinite discussion, and Polo likely had endless cities to share with Khan. The novel may have one hundred and sixty-five pages, yet reads as a slice of a discourse that has no real beginning or ending.

As I stated before, both Six Memos For the Next Millennium and Invisible Cities require multiple readings. I've barely scratched the surface of analysis, and I've resisted further research on both Calvino and the novel. I wanted to take everything at face value, using just the texts as my guides.

I feel this is a decent stopping point.

Works Cited:
Calvino, Italo. Six Memos For the Next Millennium. Copyright 1988, the Estate of Italo Calvino.

Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Copyright 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore/English translation Copyright 1974 by Harcourt, Inc.

The Calvino Project

Earlier today, I was scanning my bookshelves, looking for a new book to read. I reached for Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, a book that I've started casually a few times and haven't finished. However, Calvino's Six Memos For the Next Millennium was nearby. Feeling ambitious, I decided to re-read Six Memos as an introduction to Invisible Cities.

First, a quick summary. Six Memos started as a series of lectures by Calvino, outlining what he thought were the most important themes that would guide literature into the twenty-first century (this was in 1985). They are: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity (he died before writing on consistency). I plan to explore how these ideas correlate with Invisible Cities, and I re-read the opening chapter, "Lightness." Thanks to the beauty of literary theory, my literal reading of a select passage brought to mind two modern authors.

"We might say that throughout the centuries two opposite tendencies have competed in literature: one tries to make language into a weightless element that hovers above things like a cloud or better, perhaps, the finest dust, or, better still, a field of magnetic impulses. The other tries to give language the weight, density, and concreteness of things, bodies, and sensations (Calvino 15)."

Language as a "weightless element" immediately invoked minimalism for me, with the first example being Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke). Language with "weight, density" makes me think of David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, Consider the Lobster). True, this probably wasn't what Calvino had in mind (his examples run more along the lines of mythology, Dante, and Cavalcanti).

My point is that my project began with two books by one author, yet led me to ideas for future blog posts that will include even more writers. I'm not trying to get too far ahead of myself. The next post(s) will primarily be on Invisible Cities and Six Memos.

I'm sure Calvino would be pleased that literature (not necessarily his own) is still this thought-provoking in the new millennium. If more ideas and authors come to mind, the essay "Multiplicity" should be a good workout.

Work Cited:
Calvino, Italo. Six Memos For the Next Millennium. Copyright 1988, the Estate of Italo Calvino.