Volume 32, Number 18 · November 21, 1985

On Italo Calvino

By Gore Vidal

On the morning of Friday, September 20, 1985, the first equinoctial storm of the year broke over the city of Rome. I awoke to thunder and lightning; and thought I was, yet again, in World War II. Shortly before noon, a car and driver arrived to take me up the Mediterranean coast to a small town on the sea called Castiglion della Pescáia where, at one o'clock, Italo Calvino, who had died the day before, would be buried in the village cemetery.



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