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.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a preference for novels that reveal complex and difficult human relationships while maintaining a sense of clarity.
Italo Calvino's quote suggests that he is drawn to novels that, despite their exploration of complicated and sometimes dark aspects of human relationships, manage to present these elements clearly. The 'illusion of transparency' implies that the author believes a good narrative should illuminate the intricacies of human connections, allowing readers to grasp the underlying emotions and dynamics, even when those dynamics are fraught with conflict and discomfort.
In practice
This quote could be used in a book club discussion about character development.
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.
...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.
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
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.
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 canβt make anything.
Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
A novel is not a summary of its plot but a collection of instances, of luminous specific details that take us in the direction of the unsaid and unseen.
I belong to Russian literature, but I am an American citizen, and I think it's the best possible combination.
Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.
When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.
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