SOURCE: “I racconti,” in Difficult Games: A Reading of I racconti by Italo Calvino, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1990, pp. 5–17.

In the following essay, Ricci discusses the defining characteristics of the stories comprising I racconti, asserting that the unifying theme of the collection is “the journey of man from a position of communion with the world, in the early tales, towards an existential and hermetic solitude in the final novellas.”

In viewing Racconti as a text, one must come to terms with its component parts. There are 52 stories or tales, one for each week of the year, or for the number of cards in a modern deck (this not only presages The Castle of Crossed Destinies but underscores the combinatorial nature of the collection). The tales are divided into four books, one for each season of the year or, continuing our analogy, for each suit of cards. The tales...