Six Memos for the Next Millenium/The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1985-86 (Vintage International) - Softcover

Calvino, Italo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679742379 ISBN 13: 9780679742371

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1993

Synopsis

Six Memos for the Millennium is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watchwords for our appreciation of Calvino himself.

What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, to each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. A sixth lecture, on consistency, was never committed to paper, and we are left only to ponder the possibilities. With this book, he gives us the most eloquent defense of literature written in the twentieth century—a fitting gift for the next millennium.

About this title

Review:

‘A rather wonderful little book, full of wit and erudition' -- Daily Telegraph

‘As commentary on fiction's strategies and possibilities, the book is alive with stimulating suggestivity...exhilarating and poignant' -- Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

‘Calvino will continue to glitter... well into the next millennium and after, a master in the empire of the imagination' -- Ian Thomson, Independent on Sunday

From the Back Cover:

The fate of literature and the book in the so-called postindustrial age is being questioned . . . My faith in the future of literature rests on the knowledge that there are things that only literature, with its particular capacities, can give us. from Six Memos for the Next Millennium

At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Six Memos for the Next Millennium is Calvino s testament, containing the five lectures he completed. Now in a new translation by poet Geoffrey Brock, these memos form a stirring defense of literature and an indispensable guide to Calvino s own writings. He devotes one lecture each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity, drawing examples from his vast knowledge of myth, folklore, and works both ancient and modern. Readers will be astonished by the prescience of these lectures, which have only gained in relevance as Calvino s next millennium has dawned.

Italo Calvino(1923 1985) attained worldwide renown as one of the twentieth century s greatest storytellers. Born in Cuba, he was raised in San Remo, Italy, and later lived in Turin, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere. Among his many works are Invisible Cities, If on a winter s night a traveler, The Baron in the Trees, and other novels, as well as numerous collections of fiction, folktales, criticism, and essays. His works have been translated into dozens of languages.

Geoffrey Brock is an award-winning translator and poet whose translations include works of Umberto Eco, Cesare Pavese, and others.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679742379
• ISBN 13: 9780679742371
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 124