Reviews

Reviews Links & Letters 2, 1995 101 style, ranging from short introductory notes to more academic discussions. As this rnay be related to different origins, some more inforrnation on the essays' first contexts could have been usehl to readers curious about their original aims, or interested in Calvino's career as a whole. Such information, however, is not necessary to enjoy the book. In fact, after reading it some readers may feel like turning to one of the books discussed, or going back to the classics thev have read with a new interest. Even thoLgh the interest of individual essays may vary depending on the reader's background and tastes, the general aims and the ideas expressed in the title essay are comuletelv valid. Calvino reminds us that in &e encí the only reason for reading the classics is that it is better than not reading them (p. 20) and that books important to us are not read for obligation, but for pleasure. And this is sornething both students and teachers of literature should always remember. Anna Llisterri i Boix Universitat Autbnoma de Barcelona ITALO CALVINO, Seis Propuestas Para el Próximo Milenio. Madrid: Siruela, 1989. 138 pages. Italo Calvino's Six Memosfor the Next Millenium is a posthumous collection of lectures that should have been delivered at Harvard University, but could not because of the author's death. These six memos stand for the literary values that Calvino proposes to save and encourage in the future. If these requirernents were fulfilled, the hnction of literature could be said to be entirely existential; in other words, it would establish a real and meaninghl communication, discarding purely rhetorical works. Literature would bring poetry, science, aBd philosophy together, encouraging an escape from the world of the individual self. We would inter~ret literature as a way to save language from the present day qdisease)), the world of visual technolo that is making it lose i its cognitive strength and quickness. Literature would be understood as a means to shape life. The mernos are on: lightness, quickness, exactitude,visibility, multiplicity and consistency. They correspond to the different chauters in the book. Calvino I puts fonvard Lightness as the way of looking at life that writers should aim at if they are to fight against the heaviness that we see in the present world. Here, Calvino insists on the fact that he is not proposing an escape from reality, but an approach to the borld from a different uoint of referenc a . with other methods of Lnowledge based 60th on philosophy and science. Next, Quickness basically refers to both economy and precision in language. Quickness can also be read as the result of the balahce between concentration and craftsmdnship on the one hand, and rnobility and ease on the other. In a similar way, the need for exactitude in the organization of literary works, the choice of language and images and their intelligent use so that their inherent referentia1 power is preserved and exploited to the maximum. In the next memo, on Visibilitv. he en'hances the creation of , - valid, new imagks. Multiplicity is concerned with the fact of looking at the novel as an encyclopedia that interweaves various kinds of knowledge and codes into a ulural vision of the world. avino put$ fonvard an optimistic outlook on the duture of literature. and his ambitious proposal could, in this sense. be easilv rnistaken for a romantic attempt, had the book not been written in such a rational and intelligent way. The names given to tk rnemos already point at the bright side of life. Besides, the book itself is a good e X ample of the values the 102 Links & Letters 2, 1995 Reviews author is portraying. The simple language Calvino uses to convey such delicate and deep rnatters turn the book into an attractive theoretical and practica1 text. Also. the wav his assurn~tions are exemplifiéd with'texts frorn ;he past and the present is very clarifying. By doing so, he backs his areuments and hel~s the reader V to visualize the rnessage, providing this work on literary theory -usually a grayish subiectwith an unconventional. livelv ' I flavour. Bretvity and quality are the two key adjectives to describe this book. On the whole, it is a balanced work thanks to the contrast and complementation benveen ideas and language, past and present, theory and practice. 1 think al1 these characteristics contribute to making the access to literature easier for . . everybody. Lídia Schibi García Universitat Autbnorna de Barcelona WAYNE C. BOOTH. The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1988. 557 pages. A reader whio is permanently open to an exchanee of ideas and a revision of values througYh fiction: such is the ideal after which, according to Wayne C. Booth, we should try to fashion ourselves if we are to take füll advantage of our positions as consumers of literature. For what is being proposed in professor Booth's latest book, The Company We Keep, is nothing less than the recovery of the old idea of literature as valilable instruction. which has been neglected in literary studies for more than thirtv vears. , , Doubtless there are specific reasons for that neglect, and Booth takes most of them into account at the very outset of his book. The ~rejection of inquiry into valuesn, as he puts it, that has been brought along by various developrnents of literary criticism (with the notorious exception of Marxisrn, where nevertheless the ethicai has sornetirnes been bracketed in favour of the politicai, or has been considered synonymous with it) is succintly but didactically exarnined in the first pages, in a lively description of the most abstract theorizations of art. But it is in the consideration of an alternative form of dicussion on books, to which the reader would be able to bring along hislher own personal values and opinions, that this book makes its most important contribution. Thus Booth rnakes substantial use of a metaphor that has been long left unused in critica1 practice, but which was one of the key figures in the hurnanist discourse on books for more than four centuries: the image of the book as a friend to the reader. The many gifts that such friends may bring to us are analyzed and described in detail: otherness (the approach to a different culture or to a set ofworldviews that are different frorn ours), intensity, variety, enjoyment. ((Implied author)) is the term ernployed by Booth here: for he takes into accounr the way in which the very notion of authorship has been relativized in the last decades, and thus distinguishes between the «author» that the rhetoric of the book implies and the actual writer (neither of them is to be confüsed, rnoreover, with the narrative voice, which may point to values which do not coincide with those that the implied author wants to promote). However, the final decision to integrate these values or to reject them, to accept the friendship that the book offers or to dismiss it will rest solely in the reader's hands. Booth does not see the interpretive act as the coiiective choice of some nebulous ((interpretive community)), but as the result of a serious and responsible personal investigation carried out by the reader. And it is there, in the field of per-