Italo Calvino's autobiographical notes collected to good effect

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HERMIT IN PARIS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS

By Italo Calvino

Translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin

Pantheon, $23, 255 pages

REVIEWED BY REX ROBERTS

As his wife notes in her preface to "Hermit in Paris," a collection of 14 autobiographical pieces by the

late Italo Calvino, the volume will be of most interest to the author's fans. The memoirs, reflections and interviews assembled here for the first time in English are reprints from Italian editions, with the exception of "American Diary 1959?1960," never before published, and the title essay, which appeared as a limited edition in Switzerland. Fortunately, these two writings are the best in the book, although Calvino's journal of his six-month tour of the United States, courtesy of the Ford Foundation, is sketchy, and his hesitant celebration of Paris, his adopted city, is scant.

The majority of "Hermit in Paris" recounts Calvino's political awakening and subsequent disillusionment -- his involvement in the Italian resistance during World War II, his embrace of the Communist Party, and his quarrel with the Stalinists -- as well as his development as a writer. He talks a good deal about his childhood in San Remo, his decision to move to Turin, and his relationships with colleagues and mentors (in particular, with Cesare Pavese, Elio Vittorini and Guilio Einaudi, men of letters in Italy during the mid-20th century).