If On A Winter's Night A Reviewer

On the occasion of Italo Calvino's 20th death anniversary, Jonathan Lethem writes of his admiration for the man's work: "Calvino was more than simply one of my favorite writers...his novels and stories and fables were both classically modernist and giddily postmodern, embracing both experiment and tradition, at once conceptual and humane, intimate and mythic."

He goes on to propose the publication of a "fat volume" entitled The Best of Calvino. Hmm...perhaps when such a volume is finally published, Lethem's essay will become the foreword -- in the same manner that the Vintage UK paperback of Alice Munro's Runaway is prefaced by Jonathan Franzen's rave that originally appeared in the New York Times Book Review.