What does Calvino mean when he talks about his goal “to remove weight from the structure of the story and from language”? How can this be accomplished, and why is it important?
What Calvino describes as quickness goes beyond the concept of pacing in fiction and stretches out to qualities of language on one side and qualities of form on another. Perhaps quickness’s complexity reflects its necessity; after all, without some sense of quickness, a book becomes a chore to read. If you ask someone what he or she thinks of a book, and that person answers, “It’s kind of slow,” you probably won’t be eager to rread it yourself. What makes quickness so essential? What forms of quickness are most appealing or effective for you?
The conceit behind the book’s title is that while the second millennium was the millennium of the book, the third millennium may not be. Calvino suggests that contemporary technology may be changing the form of literature. Do you think these observations (now more than three decades old) are valid? Consider Calvino’s comments in conjunction with Manguel’s work.
Are lightness and quickness qualities that you value in literary works or language generally? Or do you prefer heaviness and — if not actual slowness — a quality of relaxation or pensiveness? Either way, why? What works or passages from works (not necessarily those from our class readings) represent these values to you, and why?
How does reading either of these essays, or both, inform your reading of either Invisible Cities or If on a winter’s night a traveler? How do Calvino’s fictional works reflect his “literary values,” as he calls them, or — perhaps more accurately, as he wrote the fictions first — how do these values reflect his works? Avoid any of Calvino’s examples from and explanations of his own works in these pages in answering this question; make your own connections.