What’s in my Book Haul? (Calvino, Flaubert, Murakami and MORE!) 

nice book haul

I loved hearing about the Calvino! And the Murakamis!

In the 90's I attended a lecture John Updike gave, and during question and answers I asked him what he thought about Gore Vidal's recently published memoir Palimpsest. Vidal never liked Updike's writing, but I didn't share that with the audience. Specifically I said that Vidal had written that he (Updike) was good on infidelity. It caused laughter from the audience and Updike to exclaim, "I knew there was a reason why I didn't want to read that damn memoir!" Laughing it off, then quickly stating that Vidal was a great writer. He then went on talk about infidelity being the subject of great literature like Madame Bovary and Ana Karenina. Afterward I had him sign a copy of Nabokov's Lolita for a friend of mine who refused to read it, but I thought if he recommended it (which he did!) she'd do it. And a copy of Henry Green's Partygoing which Updike had recently reviewed in The New Yorker and introduced me to. He was pretty nice about it all. I had already read Madame Bovary by then, but it wasn't my first Flaubert book, that was A Sentimental Education which I read when I was 18. It appealed me at the time, a young man falling in love with a married older woman. Remains a favorite book of mine. Back to Vidal. Gore introduced me to Italo Calvino. He championed him in The New York Review of Books in the mid 80's, praising Invisible Cities in particular. Calvino and Vidal were good friends and Calvino credited him for his success in the U.S. I don't know why so many readers love On a Winter's Night, a good book, but nothing close to Invisible Cities. I think you'll enjoy Mr. Palomar.