The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings, by Italo Calvino, translated by Martin McLaughlin
reviewed by Pedro Ponce

Italo Calvino. Hermit in Paris: Autobiographical Writings. Trans. Martin McLaughlin. Pantheon, 2003. 255 pp. $23.00.

Known for fanciful narrative experiments like Invisible Cities and If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino is revealed in a less whimsical light in Hermit in Paris, a collection of autobiographical works spanning three decades and published here for the first time in English. Aspiring writers may despair of learning the secret behind the author’s spare yet richly expressive prose style. Apparently, so did Calvino: in an interview published in 1985, he observes, “Every time I start writing something, it requires an effort of will, because I know that what awaits me is the labour and dissatisfaction of trying and trying again, correcting, rewriting.” Other pieces deal with the author’s youth, growing up with freethinker scientist parents at a time when fascism held sway in Italy. Calvino—who fought as part of the Italian resistance during the Second World War—eventually joined the Communist Party, only to have his ideals betrayed, first by Stalin, then by Khrushchev. After resigning from the party in 1957, Calvino expressed frustration with his dual commitments in a 1978 interview: “It is no accident that I spent many years of my life banging my head against a brick wall, trying to square the circle that was involved in living the life of literature and Communism at the same time.” For American readers, the true centerpiece of this collection is not the title essay—a meditation on writing and place—but rather Calvino’s American diary of 1959-60, when the author was visiting on a Ford Foundation scholarship. His wry and often withering observations take in everything from beatnik culture to the Cold War patriotism of Texas. The pieces in this collection present a portrait of the author as an ambivalent man, struggling to engage with the world in all its complacency and contradictions.