Word: calvino
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Evoking the teasing style of Italian authors such as Italo Calvino or Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Martel leads his reader on a chase through a house of mirrors. “Beatrice and Virgil” is slyly autobiographical and self-referential. It begins by telling the story of an author named Henry and his struggles to get his latest opus published. He has written a dual book and essay that seek to bring the Holocaust out of the stultifying realm of historical narrative and first-hand accounts into the realm of fiction. According to Henry, it is only...
Critics have aptly compared Mason to the experimental novelist Italo Calvino; the looping path of “The Lost Books of The Odyssey” calls to mind the continual beginnings of Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” and the distorted views of Venice in “Invisible Cities” find their match in Mason’s ever-refracted portrait of Odysseus. Both authors leave the reader with the task of sorting through their sketches. Like Calvino, Mason trades in shadows...
Also like Calvino, Mason prefers puzzles to set truths. For that reason, his novel goes beyond a simple adaptation of a classic text. In his essay “Why Read the Classics?” Calvino once wrote, “A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much a sense of discovery as the first reading.” Mason’s reimagining takes such discovery to heart. He himself may be aware of the similarities between his and the Italian author’s work. Many of his plot twists recall Calvino?...