Italo Calvino, long recognized in Italy as one of its most prominent contemporary writers, has been for the most part neglected in the United States by all but Italianists…. Calvino's works show a marked progression from the neorealist mode of his first novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders, to the fantastic mode of Cosmicomics, t zero, and The Invisible Cities…. For the latecomer to Calvino's works, a reading of the realistic novels serves as a reminder that the fantastic in Calvino is not a form of escapism, but is grounded in a persistent sociopolitical concern.

In the 1950's, Calvino wrote two short novels, Marcovaldo or the Seasons in the City and Smog, which present an image of the city that is perhaps even more valid today than it was twenty years ago. The first novel, Marcovaldo, is located somewhere between the two poles of the realistic...