New York Is Perhaps The Only Place

You Are About To Begin Reading Italo Calvino's New Novel, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.

It Was The Hour In Which Objects Lose The Consistency Of Shadow That Accompanies Them During The Night And Gradually Reacquire Colors, But Seem To Cross Meanwhile An Uncertain Limbo, Faintly Touched, Just Breathed On By Light; The Hour In Which One Is Least Certain Of The World's Existence.

You Take Delight Not In A City's Seven Or Seventy Wonders, But In The Answer It Gives To A Question Of Yours.

The Lives Of Individuals Of The Human Race Form A Constant Plot, In Which Every Attempt To Isolate One Piece Of Living That Has A Meaning Separate From The Rest-for Example, The Meeting Of Two People, Which Will Become Decisive For Both-must Bear In Mind That Each Of The Two Brings With Himself A Texture Of Events, Environments, Other People, And That From The Meeting, In Turn, Other Stories Will Be Derived Which Will Break Off From Their Common Story.

There Is Nothing For It But For All Of Us To Invent Our Own Ideal Libraries Of Classics. I Would Say That Such A Library Ought To Be Composed Half Of Books We Have Read And That Have Really Counted For Us, And Half Of Books We Propose To Read And Presume Will Come To Count—leaving A Section Of Empty Shelves For Surprises And Occasional Discoveries