I missed yesterday, but am impressed that I am not missing a few more days, as the myriad details associated with the end of the semester rear their heads.

I was able to find an hour this afternoon to read the last two chapters of Italo Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millennium".

Although there are only five memos (he died before completeing the sixth), and although I have thoroughly loved the first three chapters, the fourth chapter simply didn't capture my attention. The title was Visibility. However the fifth chapter was in the company of the first three. The title for the fifth chapter was Multiplicity. Here are a few quotes:

• ... the contemporary novel as an encyclopedia, as a method of knowledge, and above all as a network of connections between the events, the people, and the things of the world.
• Carlo Emilio Gadda tried all his life to represent the world as a knot, a tangled skein of yarn; to represent it without in the least diminishing the inextricable complexity or, to put it better, the simultaneous presence of the most disparate elements that converge to determine every event.
• Whatever the starting point, the matter in hand spreads out and out, encompasing ever vaster horizons, and if it were permitted to go on further in every direction, it would end by encompassing the entire universe.
• to know is to insert something into what is real, and hence distort reality
• Literature remains alive today only if we set immeasurable goals
• Reference to Thomas Mann "Magic Mountain"
• Reference to Georges Perec "Life, Directions for Use"

Both of these books are available at Chapters! Love the internet!