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Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Paperback)

by Italo Calvino (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 136 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd (20 Feb 1992)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0224033115
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224033114
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,227,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #82 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Calvino, Italo

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Review

The 1985-86 Norton Lectures were Calvino's to deliver; the day before he was to leave Italy for Cambridge, he died. But the essays (though the sixth "memo" was never written down) were substantially finished, and his widow has done the job of preparation. Calvino here deals with the exemplars of literature most clear to him - namely: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity (Consistency was to be the sixth). To illustrate each, Calvino devotes much time to long illustrations from Ovid, Gadda, Dante, Leopardi, Musil, Kafka, Borges. These analyses are surprisingly academic in tone; they lack some of the buoyancy of Calvino's essays, sometimes seeming like Jungian seminars; they do not particularly take wing. But elegant genius that he was, Calvino - if not rigorous, and certainly often contradictory - offers much here. In discussing the virtue of lightness, for example, Calvino's background in folk tales allows him to find a defined anthropological link "between the levitation desired and the privation actually suffered." He discusses his own work as a crystalline substance and acknowledges a debt to comic strips for a visual matrix that he admits begins all his works. This, of course, is what's of most interest here - not Calvino the lecturer but Calvino the author, nodding at sources. Less gorgeous than one might have expected, but uniformally thoughtful. (Kirkus Reviews)

Ian Thomson, Independent on Sunday

‘Calvino will continue to glitter... well into the next millennium and after, a master in the empire of the imagination' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent, witty, compelling and persuasive collection, 8 Sep 2003
This review is from: Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Vintage classics) (Paperback)
It isn't often that you find a writer whose literature you enjoy and whose non-fiction writing is even more enjoyable. Calvino is one such writer for me. His Memos for the next millenium are his collection of musings on what makes great literature great and the skills that he aspired to holding as a writer, as well as those skills that he admired in other writers. For the student of literature and for would be writers everywhere this is an intelligent, witty, compelling and persuasive collection of lectures. Would be that all criticism were so balanced, informative and instructive as Calvino's.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A prophecy rapidly coming true, 2 July 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Six Memos for the Next Millennium (Vintage classics) (Paperback)
Calvino was of the last generation before the so-called 'information revolution', and the Six Memos came at the end of his life, just at the exact moment that the effects of this revolution were beginning to be felt. In this book he sets out an agenda for the importance of specific qualities of literature in the future. As we run around in circles in a society obsessed with globalism (the Internet and all its trappings, economics, and general short-termism) this agenda takes on a great deal of importance. This is not a 'fun read' as such, but if you believe in literature, then ignore this at your peril!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Guidebook for Artists of Every Discipline, 16 Jun 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Six Memos for the Next Millennium: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1985-86 (Paperback)
Calvino offers us a bag of jewels with these five essays on the principle qualities that will carry great writing into the next century. The lessons learned from "Lightness," "Quickness," "Exactitude," "Visibility," and "Multiplicity" can be applied in any creative situation. They add strength to my own compositional efforts, but even more, the multi-faceted richness of Calvino's prose and Creagh's translation is something to savor and rejoice in. Even in his essays, Calvino is a storyteller, and as always his characters are the moods and motives of the people at large, as well as simply people themselves. Whether this is your first or fiftieth time reading this little book, the rush of inspiration that will sweep over you is not to be stemmed. Buy it, read it, write in it, draw lines and circle your favorite words and sentences. This is a book to imprint into your mind.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Fluent as a novel
Sure you never read an essay written in such a fluent style. It is like a friendly conversation on a sofa, with one of the best Italian writer and critic af the century.
Published on 7 May 1999

4.0 out of 5 stars Everyone who writes or reads fiction should have this book.
There are only five memos, unfortunately. Calvino died before completing the sixth. But the five we do have are treasures of insight and intellect, giving shape to qualities of... Read more
Published on 14 July 1998

5.0 out of 5 stars Language - the reader and the writer
If you savour language, I recommend the pleasures of this slender tome. I return to it whenever I want to contemplate standards for good writing.
Published on 31 Dec 1997

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