1/23/2004 10:47:00 PM|||Andrew|||To experience a novel at once fantastical and delightful, full of surreal newness, you could do worse than picking up Italo Calvino's *If on a winter's night a traveler*. As J.D. says through his avatar, Holden Caulfield, (roughly now, I'm not motivated enough to look this up) it's the kind of book that, after reading it, you just want to call up the author on the phone and talk with him. In other ways too, I am reminded of J.D., mainly in the similarities between Calvino's *traveller* and Buddy's *Seymour: An Introduction*. Authorial chattiness is perhaps the one vice I cannot help but forgive. Not that I don't forgive many authorial vices, because I do tend to. I'm not entirely sure if I can forgive Kurt for doing his own illustrations, while I quite easily forgive him for confronting (and scaring the pants off of) Kilgore Trout. But I'm not here to discuss Kurt or J.D. but rather Italo Calvino, who though I already feel a kinship with, I hesitate to use the familiar given that I haven't even finished his book yet.

Egad! Am I recommending a book I have not yet finished reading? Why certainly I am. Certainly. I mean, I could recommend any of the books that fill the box splayed out on the floor of my room, but would you really care to read Hegel's *Introduction to the Philosophy of History*? Or perhaps *The Phantom Tollbooth* is more to your liking? But I digress. I offer two lines to you: "having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read", and "Watch out, you're elbowing your neigbors; apologize, at least." Surely I need say no more.|||107535891155815225|||