A Fantasist Not On the Fantasy Shelf: Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino, who died in 1985, was one of Italy’s foremost writers. A “literary” rather than a genre writer (though that distinction has come to mean less and less in the thirty years since his death), he nevertheless flirted with the fantastic for much of his career. A prime example of Calvino’s humorous and highly idosyncratic bent for fantasy is Our Ancestors, a volume containing three of his works from the 1950’s — two novellas, The Cloven Viscount and The Non-Existent Knight, and a novel, The Baron In the Trees.
The two novellas are light confections that amusingly juggle history, satire, and philosophical concepts. In The Cloven Viscount, a seventeenth century Sardinian nobleman, the Viscount Medaro, goes off to battle the Turks; in his first encounter with them, he is split down the middle by a cannon ball.
Both halves are stitched up and resume life as usual. Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that one half is now irredeemably evil, while the other half is insufferably good. (The “unmixed” goodness of the virtuous half alienates just as many people as the nastiness of the bad half does, in fact.)
The two halves become rivals for the same woman, a young lady named Pamela, and wind up fighting a duel over her, in which they are both wounded. A doctor stitches them back together and the restored and again properly “mixed” Medaro marries Pamela. They live happily ever after, highlighting the fairy tale qualities of the story. (Calvino had a great regard for the Brothers Grimm and in 1956 edited his own collection of Italian folktales.)
The Non-Existent Knight tells the story of one Agilulf, a knight of Charlemagne. Agilulf is a proper soldier in every way but one — he doesn’t exist. The only thing in his impeccably maintained armor is a voice.
Browsing about the Internet recently, I stumbled on something that interested me. Several things, actually. Specifically, the results at the 
