wordy authors (was: Re: [geeks] okay. )

[dave at cca.org]

chris at chrisbyrne.com writes:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: geeks-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:geeks-admin at sunhelp.org]On Behalf
>> Of dave at cca.org

>> I think the only writer I can't criticize *anything* by is Calvino.
>> He could do no wrong.

>Okay I agree with most of what you said (minus the Kafka thing, I just dont
>dig Kafka) but who and what is Calvino? Im not at all familiar

I only like one thing by Kafka really, "The Castle". his other novels
were just variations on that, and his short stories are just a bad 
imitation of Gogol. Gogol's short stories rule. (Stanislaw Lem's
rewrite of "The Castle" is also brilliant.)

Italo Calvino has a very surreal fairy-tale feel to him. "The Baron in
the Trees" is usually considered to be his best, but it's weird, and
I wouldn't necessarily start there. He wrote two collections of short
stories, titled "Cosmicomics" and "T Zero" which are like Salvador Dali
writing for the "Scientific Recreations" collumn. I've never seen
anything else remotely like them. Those, and the novel "If On A Winter's
Night A Traveler" are extremely popular with geek/science types. 
"If On A..." is a recursive novel. It's difficult to explain beyond
that.

Calvino fought for the resistance forces in the hills of Italy during
WWII, and his first novel "The Path to the Nest of Spiders" is a
fictionalized account of that period.

He's compared to Borges a lot. They have a similar feel.

------ David Fischer ------- dave at cca.org ------- http://www.cca.org ------
-------- "I prefer the ridiculous to the sublime." - James Chance ---------