Why Read The Classics? (Vintage classics) - Softcover

Calvino, Italo

3.84

2,947 ratings by Goodreads

9780099284895: Why Read The Classics? (Vintage classics)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099284898 ISBN 13: 9780099284895

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2000

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WHY READ THE CLASSICS is a collection of 36 essays by Italo Calvino on the writers, poets and scientists who had meant most to him at different stages of his life. The pieces range in time from antiquity (Homer, Ovid) through early modern and Enlightenment Europe (Ariosto, Defoe, Diderot, Voltaire) to the masters of the nineteenth-century novel, before dealing with Calvino's early American mentors (Twain, James, Hemingway) and contemporaries such as Borges, Pasternak and Queneau. They also offer the most comprehensive sample available of Calvino the literary critic in substantial articles which he wrote over a period of 30 years from the 1950s to his death in 1985. WHY READ THE CLASSICS sheds fascinating light on the key texts which influenced, and proves that as well as being the internationally renowned fiction writer, Calvino ranks among the most interesting essayists and critics of the twentieth century.

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Review:

'Enthusiasm and intelligence: these are the essential qualities of the critic. Calvino, himself a novelist of rare quality, possessed both generously. This is a book to read for itself, and also because it will send you back to other books to read, either again in a new way, or for the first time... Superb' Daily Telegraph 'This volume itself is a classic book at bedtime, a seductive invitation to forgotten opportunities or rereading' The Times

Book Description:

--'One of the most inspiring justifications of great literature I've ever come upon' Sunday Telegraph--'This volume itself is a classic book at bedtime, a seductive invitation to forgotten opportunities or rereading' The Times

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