Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [0]
Numbers in the Dark
“The curious quirks that would shape Calvino's eccentric orbit can be descried, along with the exuberant talent and sense of magic that would make that orbit a flaming one.”
—Los Angeles Times
“With seventeen books in print, Italo Calvino enjoys a privilege that few foreign writers ever achieve here: virtually all his works can be read in English…. Calvino's ready availability is of course a sign (and support) of his canonical status in world literature, the capacit) of his fiction to be significant in many different cultures…, Tim Parks's translation is perfectly in tune with the various dialects and discourses that Calvino assimilated during his Career. By the ‘80s his supple Italian was tossing off polylingual arpeggios, technical jargon's, nonce words…. More than accurate and readable, [Parks's] version is inventive.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Numbers in the Dark is a glorious grab bag … with gems from every phase in Calvino's career.”
—San Francisco Sunday Examiner <& Chronicle Book Review
“Warmly and experdy translated by Tim Parks, a gifted writer himself.”
—Esquire
Italo Calvino
Numbers in the Dark
Italo Calvino (1923—1985) was born in Cuba and grew up in San Remo, Italy. He was a member of the partisan movement during the German occupation of northern Italy in World War II. The novel that resulted from that experience, published in English as The Path to the Nest of Spiders, won widespread acclaim. His other works of fiction include The Baron in the Trees, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Cosmicomics, Difficult Loves, If on a Winters Night a Traveler, Invisible Cities, Marcovaldo, Mr. Palomar, The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount, t %ero, Under the Jaguar Sun, and The Watcher and Other Stories. His works of nonfiction include Six Memos for the Next Millennium and The Uses of Literature, collections of literary essays, and the anthology Italian Folktales.
also by Italo Calvino
The Baron in the Trees
Cosmicomics
Difficult Loves
Fantastical Tales
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
Invisible Cities
Italian Folktales
Marcovaldo
Mr. Palo mar
The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount
The Road to San Giovanni
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
Under the faguar Sun
The Uses of Literature
The Castle of Crossed Destinies
t zero
The Watcher and Other Stories
Contents
Preface by Esther Calvino
FABLES AND STORIES 1943-1958
The Man Who Shouted Teresa
The Flash
Making Do
Dry River
Conscience
Solidarity
The Black Sheep
Good for Nothing
Like a Flight of Ducks
Love Far from Home
Wind in a City
The Lost Regiment
Enemy Eyes
A General in the Library
The Workshop Hen
Numbers in the Dark
The Queen's Necklace
Becalmed in the Antilles
The Tribe with Its Eyes on the Sky
Nocturnal Soliloquy of a Scottish Nobleman
A Beautiful March Day
TALES AND DIALOGUES 1968-1984
World Memory
Beheading the Heads
The Burning of the Abominable House
The Petrol Pump
Neanderthal Man
Montezuma
Before You Say ‘Hello’
Glaciation
The Call of the Water
The Mirror, the Target
The Other Eurydice
The Memoirs of Casanova
Henry Ford
The Last Channel
Implosion
Nothing and Not Much
Preface
Italo Calvino began writing in his teens: short stories, fables, poetry and plays. The theatre was his first vocation and perhaps the one that he spent most time on. There are many surviving works from this period which have never been published. Calvino's extraordinary capacity for self-criticism and self-referential analysis soon led him to give up the theatre. In a letter to his friend Eugenio Scalfari written in 1945 he announces laconically, Tve switched to stories.’ Written in capitals and covering a whole page the news must have been important indeed.
From then on there was never a period when Calvino was not writing. He wrote every day, wherever he was and in whatever circumstances, at a table or on his knee, in planes or hotel rooms. It is not