Italo Calvino : letters, 1941-1985 / selected and with an introduction by Michael Wood ; translated by Martin McLaughlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Calvino, Italo.

Contributor:

Wood, Michael, 1936-

McLaughlin, M. L. (Martin L.)

Standardized Title:

Correspondence. Selections. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Calvino, Italo. Correspondence.

Calvino, Italo.

Authors, Italian--20th century--Correspondence.

Authors, Italian.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (641 p.)

Edition:

Updated

Other Title:

Letters, 1941-1985

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This is the first collection in English of the extraordinary letters of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Italy's most important postwar novelist, Italo Calvino (1923-1985) achieved worldwide fame with such books as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. But he was also an influential literary critic, an important literary editor, and a masterful letter writer whose correspondents included Umberto Eco, Primo Levi, Gore Vidal, Leonardo Sciascia, Natalia Ginzburg, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luciano Berio. This book includes a generous selection of about 650 letters, written between World War II and the end of Calvino's life. Selected and introduced by Michael Wood, the letters are expertly rendered into English and annotated by well-known Calvino translator Martin McLaughlin.The letters are filled with insights about Calvino's writing and that of others; about Italian, American, English, and French literature; about literary criticism and literature in general; and about culture and politics. The book also provides a kind of autobiography, documenting Calvino's Communism and his resignation from the party in 1957, his eye-opening trip to the United States in 1959-60, his move to Paris (where he lived from 1967 to 1980), and his trip to his birthplace in Cuba (where he met Che Guevara). Some lengthy letters amount almost to critical essays, while one is an appropriately brief defense of brevity, and there is an even shorter, reassuring note to his parents written on a scrap of paper while he and his brother were in hiding during the antifascist Resistance.This is a book that will fascinate and delight Calvino fans and anyone else interested in a remarkable portrait of a great writer at work.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction / Wood, Michael

Translator'S Note / McLaughlin, Martin

Abbreviations

1941-1945

1946-1950

1951-1955

1956-1960

1961-1965

1966-1970

1971-1975

1976-1980

1981-1985

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781299283626

1299283624

9781400846245

1400846242

OCLC:

830938985