Mind if I recommend you a very interesting critic?
What are some classical music albums you;d recommend for a beginner?
Besides Bloom, whats a good guide to world literature?
Ib your opinion, who is probaly the greatest novelist?
Borges is a writer who was not at all what I expected... rather like Kafka... but one who continued to grow upon me over time... until I was a sworn acolyte. Like Kafka, Calvino, and the author(s) of the Arabian Nights he is a brilliant fabulist... a teller of tales... a conjurer who blurs distinctions between genre: between short stories and essays, science fiction and literary criticism. He is a master of turning the idea into narrative... of taking concepts to their ultimate logical/illogical/absurd conclusion and he achieves this in but a few pages. A writer of fine yet simple and clear prose, he is the bibliophile's writer... an author who admits that he has experienced far more in books than in his rather mundane life. He has captured unexpected relationships between writers of far distant eras and cultures, and he plays with authors, and characters in a magical way that is not far from the manner in which Lewis Carroll plays with words, mathematics, and chess.
What is it you admire about borges?
Italo Calvino is one of the great fabulists... like the author(s) of the Arabian Nights, La Fontaine, J.L. Borges, Kafka, some of the Biblical writers, etc... Calvino is a masterful Post_Modernist... building his tales upon scientific formula, imagined conversations between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, the fall of Tarot Cards, etc... and yet he brings these marvelously to life. There's a marvelous wit and Joie de vivre... and a joy to story-telling... to be found in Calvino. He strikes me as something akin to Mozart in music. His language is equally witty... jovial/joyful... and crystalline. Its not mundane and stripped-down ala Hemingway or Kafka nor richly perfumed and sensuous ala Baudelaire, Gautier, or Proust. Rather it is beautifully descriptive in a most precise manner... crystalline.
What do you admire about italo calvino?
I think I am starting to like painting, mostly the fantastic works. They're so imaginative and beautiful, the kind of images you'd find in dreams. This recent fascination of mine just after I rented this book filled with 40 images of paintings. It was mindblowing.
Is alright that above all that I enjoy art for aesthetic reasons rather than "truth"?
