This slim volume was quite rich in connections and interest.

First, I’ve always been fascinated by Calvino’s name and work.  His “Invisible Cities” is a fantasy involving Kubla Khan and Marco Polo who describes the cities in the Khan’s empire while the two of them play chess.  Wonderful collection of mini-stories.

Second, the five essays in this book were going to be the substance of Covino’s 1982 Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard.  We have just been to the third of the six 2025 Norton Lectures given by this year’s speaker, Sir Steve McQueen.  The Norton Lectures this year celebrated their 100th anniversary, so Covino’s contribution from nearly 50 years ago has special meaning.

Third, these lectures are rich in literary allusions with some of my favorite authors being referenced as Covino lays out the principles behind his writing—lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.  In the chapter on Multiplicity he focuses his attention on the Oulipo movement, the group of writers, artists, and scientists in Paris who set out to create works within constraints.  My favorite example is Georges Perec’s book in which he does not use a single letter ‘e’.  Covino cites Perec’s greatest book, ‘Life, Directions for Use’ in which he uses a large apartment building as the framework for portraying the complexity and richness of every person’s life.  Covino concludes this final lecture with these lines: “I have come to the end of this apologia for the novel as a vast net.  Someone might object that the more the work tends toward the multiplication of possiblities, the further it departs from that unicum which is the self of the writer, his inner sincerity and the discovery of his own truth.  But I would answer: Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?  Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.”

To this remarkable paragraph, I would add the work of Perec, Borges, and Harold Bloom to understand  the value of reading, its enlargement of our world, and the resultant empathy that we must bring to every human interaction.

Sadly, Covino suffered a stroke as he was preparing to travel to Harvard to give these lectures.  He died at the age of 61 having written 16 books which remain fascinating and relevant to the study of literature and life today.