Abstract
The Watcher has a special place in Calvino’s production. Coming after four years of virtual narrative silence,’ and the outcome of long, agonizing work stretching over a decade, it is difficult to classify (long short story? novella? extended meditation?) and signals a break in the style of that production. To be sure, even earlier Calvino felt (and expressed) the fascination of highly stylized, rarefied, “light” situations, and even later he continued to turn compassionate, somewhat startled, somewhat amused attention to everyday life; but there is no question that beforeThe Watcher his fiction has a more standard structure (more of a conventional plot, more traditionally conceived characters), whereas after it experimental moves take over and dominate the page.
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Bencivenga, E. (2001). Philosophy and Literature in Calvino’s Tales. In: Exercises in Constructive Imagination. Topoi Library, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0952-2_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0952-2_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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