The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.
Italo CalvinoRead
In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature serves to enhance and clarify differences in communication rather than diminish them in a world of rapid media.
Italo Calvino's quote reflects on the role of literature in a fast-paced media environment where other forms of communication can sometimes homogenize or oversimplify ideas. Rather than merging everything into one uniform message, literature has the unique ability to articulate and celebrate the differences between various ideas and cultures, thereby enriching our understanding and appreciation of diversity in thought and expression.
Themes
LiteratureCommunicationDifferencesMediaExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of digital media on literature, this quote can emphasize the importance of maintaining diversity in expression.
More from Italo Calvino
All quotes →Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.
Italo CalvinoRead
...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.
Italo CalvinoRead
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
Italo CalvinoRead
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
Italo CalvinoRead
Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can’t make anything.
Italo CalvinoRead
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Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.
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I think the reason these readers come back to me is because I represent their points of view. It may not be my point of view, but that's OK. Everyone still deserves to have their say.
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The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.
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Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Raymond ChandlerRead