Talk:Italo Calvino

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[edit] If on a winter's night section

Is If on a winter's night a traveler really that much more popular than his other stories? Enough to warrant a section on it? I haven't really seen any evidence of this anywhere... Recury 19:26, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Recury on one point: The book shouldn't have its own section in the author article. It has its own extensive article, and it's not his defining work (the way that Il Gattopardo is for di Lampedusa, for example). I think that section should be deleted as redundant. | Keithlaw 20:57, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
A year and a half later, I finally get around to taking it out. The If On a Winter's Night a Traveler article is pretty good and probably doesn't need anything from this section, but if anyone feels like adding anything from it, here it is. Recury 19:33, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
"Perhaps Calvino's most famous novel, this begins with the words, "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveller." It's a novel therefore in which the reader plays a starring role. The reader gets a love interest, the Other Reader, and obstacles thrown in his way. In particular, the first story runs out after only a chapter. A pattern is quickly set up with single chapters of novels being cut off in their prime. Interspersed with these are chapters in which the reader's story, the pursuit of the end of these intriguing novels, and the pursuit of the Other Reader, is played out. Each chapter is written in the style of a different genre of work."
The central concept of this novel is the quest to find a complete and coherent narrative: a quest being undertaken by the actual reader and the Reader as character, struggling to hunt down the ever-elusive Chapters. In fact Calvino does hide a short, elegant story in the book (more of a vignette, really), and with a magician's flair he hides it in plain sight in a part of the book to which most readers give cursory attention."

[edit] Image:Calvino-italo.jpg

It doesn't look to be a proper fair use image, since it is part of a book cover that is used to illustrate something besides the book. It will probably have to be deleted. Anyone have any other photos of Calvino? Recury 21:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Hello Recury - You may be right. Perhaps a way around this sort of thing is to print a thumb of the full book jacket (including author's image, with a proper caption identifying the book, year, and publisher). By clicking on the the thumb, the reader should see an enlarged jacket with a reasonably large image of the author (depending, of course, on how large the original uploaded image was). I think that showing a full book jacket is consistent with the policy at Wikipedia:Fair_use. There are certainly lots of articles out there with pictures of movie posters and the box covers of video games. From a publisher's point of view, this is free advertising. -WikiPedant 05:10, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
That wouldn't work either, since one of the counterexamples listed there is:
An image of a magazine cover, used only to illustrate the article on the person whose photograph is on the cover.
Which is pretty much the same thing, except that we'd be using a book cover instead of a magazine cover. Showing a full book jacket is fair use, but only if it is used to illustrate the article about the book, not the person pictured. So for example, I'm pretty sure the biography of Calvino has a large photo of him on the cover and we could use an image of that to illustrate an article on the biography itself, but using it in this article would violate fair use. Recury 13:31, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello Recury - I think it would be consistent with the policy at Wikipedia:Fair_use to use an image of the full jacket of any book authored by Calvino himself, as long as the book is mentioned as one of his works in the Calvino article. (I believe you are correct, though, that it would be inappropriate to use an image of the jacket of a biography of Calvino written by someone other than Calvino.) -WikiPedant 17:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
No, I don't mean it would not be fair use because someone else wrote the biography. I mean it would not be fair use because the only fair use rationale for book covers given is to illustrate the book itself. If you are including the little photo from inside the dust jacket as part of it to show what he looks like, then that isn't fair use. Plus it would look terrible. Recury 18:23, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello Recury - Well, we may have to agree to disagree about this matter. I feel confident that, in an article about an author, it is indeed fair use to show the full jacket of a book by that author if the book itself is mentioned in the article. This sort of situation is covered in the second sentence of the counterexample which you partially cited earlier from Wikipedia:Fair_use: "An image of a magazine cover, used only to illustrate the article on the person whose photograph is on the cover. However, if that magazine issue itself is notable enough to be a topic within the article, then fair use may apply." As for how good/bad it would look, that would vary depending on the jacket design. Some jackets have a clean, simple design with a good-sized photo of the author. -WikiPedant 18:40, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I hope this resolves matters. Richard G. Shewmaker 08:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bibliography

I'm going to do some work on the bibliography. There's some confusion in it between the publication dates of his works in Italian and later translations. In a number of cases the publication date given is the date an item originally printed in a magazine was published in book form.

His short stories and novellas present a real challenge, not only because many were first printed in magazines, but because some were printed in book form several times in combination with others.

Another challenge is that not all of his work was translated into English. I'm pretty sure a few of the titles were translated differently too.

The bibliography consists primarily of his fiction, but some non-fiction is in it as well. He wrote a tremendous amount of non-fiction: literary essays, lectures and introductions in great part. It probably makes sense to separate those.

I have almost all of his fiction in Italian. I have only a very small amount of his non-fiction but several books about him which provide a lot of information about his earlier works. I only have one of his books in English. I'll add the story titles for each of the collections since I have them on hand.

I'll bring up anything questionable here. Richard G. Shewmaker 23:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd be personally interested in alternative english translations. Everything I've seen so far is from William Weaver. —Quiddity 05:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Quiddity. Many thanks for your kind encouragement. Martin McLaughlin's Italo Calvino (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998) has a "Translations in English" section in its bibliography (p. 175-176) where the following translaters are listed: Archibald Colquhoun, Peggy Wright, William Weaver, George Martin, Tim Parks, Patrick Creagh (Six Memos for the Next Millenium), and Martin McLaughlin (revised Colquhoun's translation of The Path to the Spiders' Nests). I'll make a note today on translators and titles in the Calvino article. All best --Jumbolino (talk) 08:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fascism

I got a little lost at the mention of his belonging to a Fascist group in his youth... its placement early on lets one think he held these views as an adult. I'm curious about the source for this, and if true, and that membership was compulsory, maybe this just isn't important enough to include... it gives an odd impression, since he was anti-Fascist and actually fought fot the Resistance... just a thought Semodisesamo (talk) 18:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)