The Birth of Novalis: Friedrich Von Hardenberg's Journal of 1797, with Selected Letters and Documents Book

When it comes to Calvino, I'd always chose his innovative and magical fiction than anything non-fiction, but this book caught my eye, and I do like him a lot, so I took the plunge. These five pieces, or 'memory exercises' as so called, do offer some indirect insights into how he conjured up his imaginary stories. These writings were collected by his wife, and tell of his difficult relationship with his father, who was a farmer and horticulturist, and had a passion for studying and acclimatizing exotic wildlife which filled the young Calvino with an investigative mind. He also recalls his love for cinema, before a graphic account of fighting fascists during the Second World War, that becomes a sort of meditation on the role played by imagination in the human memory. There was one piece where he analysis living in a house in a Parisian suburb, which was good. The book overall was OK, but nowhere as good as the best of his fiction.