A Plunge Into Calvino Podcast

Tabular infographic showing the recurring patterns within Italo Calvino's novel, Invisible Cities.

Definitely a book to be experienced, but it is fun to see/examine how it's structured... a place and architecture in its own right!

As a species we have done nothing to deserve Calvino. He’s like David Bowie or Édouard Manet or Brunelleschi…from some other universe of vision and talent.

For fun - what are your top 3 Calvino works?

"Literature – even though people usually study it author by author – is always a dialog amongst many voices which intersect and reply to each other within literature and outside it."
– Italo Calvino

Can anyone help with this?

The cover of Birds Are Liars by Bernadette McBride.

Birds Are Liars, the debut short story collection by podcast contributor Bernadette McBride, is now available! It comes highly recommended by several esteemed writers (as well as by me) and includes a nod to Calvino, so listeners to the podcast should pick it up.

'Wow! A day with a great medieval series from the 1990s, based on the story by Italo Calvino! Let's enjoy a festive Sunday with The Cave of the Golden Rose on Twitch!' (thanks Google translate).

Always.

One can think of Gulliver's Travels; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; the Alice books; the scientific romances; and then of course, some of the greatest works of 20th century fiction like Brave New World and 1984, not to mention the novels of Kafka, Calvino, Borges and so on.

AI43 Winner ADA ZEJUN SHEN @ada_zshen
@svanyc.bsky.social @svaillocomx
Illustrating the queen of birds in her concealed land full of plants and creatures that didn't evolve into being. From Italo Calvino The Complete Cosmicomics chapter Origin of the Birds.

#artwork #illustration #illustrator

Invisible Cities is utterly superb.

I read The Raw Shark Texts and greatly enjoyed it. Reminds me I need to read his other novel.

(He also wrote a couple of Doctor Who audio dramas which I enjoyed)

Every other chapter had a title - and they turned out to be worth noting...

Calvino's still got it.

Also same.

Same.

What's even wilder is that he delivered a lecture on the subject in 1967! It's called Cybernetics and Ghosts and feels like it was written yesterday.

The Orientation Game Joel Gustafson

for spooky season this year I wrote about Italo Calvino's remarkable 1967 lecture "Cybernetics and Ghosts", wherein he speculates about whether a machine could ever write great literature. joelgustafson.com/posts/2025-1...

The Black Sheep ‘And then one day – nobody knows how – an honest man appeared.’ Fiction by Italo Calvino in Granta 46: Crime.

"The Black Sheep", short story by Italo Calvino.

granta.com/the-black-sh...

(That's in Six Memos For The Next Millennium)

#CalvinoNerd

Did you enjoy it?

Spotify boycott: Artists leave 'garbage hole' platform after CEO invests in AI weapons Daniel Ek's investments in AI dronemaker Helsing have unnerved artists. One called Spotify a "violent armageddon portal."

www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

I have deleted the podcast from Spotify due to my disagreement with the way the platform's profits are being used. As soon as I have a new host set up I will put it here. Transcripts of the scripted episodes remain on the podcast's WordPress.

I've never read it but I have a copy on my shelf waiting for the same reason.

Critics praised his ingenuity, blending folk tales, social allegories, and modern fables in works like "Cosmicomics" and "Invisible Cities". Post-WWII, he shifted to invention, exploring dreams, reality, and human absurdity.

This is one of my very favourite short stories.

YouTube video by shulamits The distance from the moon - Italo Calvino

Happy Birthday, Italo Calvino! (b.Oct.15, 1923)
Italo Calvino - The Distance From the Moon (1965)
Shulamit Serafy, graphic designer and illustrator, animated film adaptation (2008) of a short story from Calvino's masterpiece 'Cosmicomics' (1965).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ9c...

It certainly does! And it is wonderful.

Italo Calvino was born 102 years ago today. He was a writer of delights, a fighter of fascism, and possessor of a mind always curious and subtle. Although he died in 1985, he was so far ahead of his times that his work feels like a map of our Invisible Cities and a guide to our Crossed Destinies.