Although he first encountered the works of Italo Calvino in 1948 while living in post-war Italy, Vidal confesses that he at first had little interest, but, before writing this essay, he lets the reader know that he'd spent the previous year reading everything Calvino had written, and had concluded that "during the last quarter century Italo Calvino has advanced far beyond his American and English contemporaries.
"As they continue to look for the place where the spiders make their nests, Calvino has not only found that special place but learned how himself to make fantastic webs of prose to which all things adhere." Vidal says that in reading Calvino, he had "the unnerving sense" that he was also writing what Calvino had written so that "his art prove[s] his case as.....
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