(no subject)

Italo Calvino never wrote a bad book. Yet an author of such diffusion, without a single, encompassing magnum opus to embrace (some readers will argue for "Invisible Cities," but that ineffably lovely book shows too narrow a range of Calvino's effects, too little of his omnivorous exuberance) needs a beginner's entry point, as well, perhaps, as a compendium to point toward posterity. Does it seem sacrilegious to propose a fat volume called "The Best of Calvino"? Call it "Tales," then, or "Sixty Stories." Does it seem to do violence to choose from linked pieces, or from books long since enshrined in reader's hearts in their present, inviolate state? It isn't as though the individual volumes need to go out of print to make room for the career-spanning omnibus I have in mind. Perhaps you consider it impossible to choose from within a structure as organically perfect as "Invisible Cities"? Fine, then include the entirety of that short book, just as "The Thurber Carnival" found space for the whole of "My Life and Hard Times."

Lethem a few years ago on the need for a Calvino selection.

I agree with his suggestion--Cities is as indispensable to Calvino as My Life is to Thurber. I can think of a lot of definite inclusions right away:

(Difficult Loves)
The Argentine Ant
Adam, One Afternoon
The Enchanted Garden
Theft in a Pastry Shop
Lazy Sons
Big Fish, Little Fish
One of the Three Is Still Alive

Adventure of a Traveler
Adventure of a Bather
Adventure of the Married Couple (UK edition only)
Adventure of a Near-Sighted Man
Adventure of a Reader

(Complete Cosmicomics)
The Distance of the Moon
The Dinosaurs

The Origin of the Birds
Priscilla
The Night Driver
The Count of Monte Cristo

Nothing and Not Much (also in Numbers in the Dark)

(Marcovaldo)
Park-Bench Vacation
The Wrong Stop

(Mr. Palomar)
Reading a Wave

(Numbers in the Dark)
Good for Nothing
Love Far from Home
Before You Say "Hello"

(If on a winter's night a traveler)
If on a winter's night a traveler
In a network of lines that interlace
Around a shallow grave

(Road to San Giovanni)
La Poubelle Agreee

Invisible Cities


And maybe the rest of If on a winter's night a traveler? Pretty much everything in it is top-tier.

And maybe Smog, The Nonexistent Knight and bits of Baron in the Trees.