Hermit in Paris by Italo Calvino Read Free Book Online Page B

designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to house Solomon Guggenheim’s art collection. It has just been opened. Everyone criticizes it; I am a fanatical supporter of it, but I find myself nearly always on my own in this. The building is a kind of spiral tower, a continuous ascending ramp without steps, with a glass cupola. As you go up and look out you always have a different view with perfect proportions, since there is a semicircular outcrop that offsets the spiral, and down below there is a small slice of elliptical flower-bed and a window with a tiny glimpse of a garden, and these elements, changing at whatever height you are now at, are an example of architecture in movement of unique precision and imagination. Everyone claims that the architecture dominates the paintings and it is true (apparently Wright hated painters), but what does it matter? You go there primarily to see the architecture, and then you see the paintings always well and uniformly illuminated, which is the main thing. There is the problem of the permanently sloping floor which poses the conundrum of how to get the picture straight. They solved the problem by hanging the pictures not on the wall but on iron spars that stick out from the wall to the centre of the painting. In reality the Guggenheim collection is not extraordinary, apart from the powerful collection of Kandinskys which we have already seen in Rome, and there are many pieces that are second-rate. (Unlike the Museum of Modern Art, which is not enormous, but everything it houses is a breathtaking masterpiece; or the beautiful rooms of modern painting in the Metropolitan, spoiled unfortunately by a horrendous Dalí which people queue in order to see.) Everyone is in agreement in criticizing the exterior of the Guggenheim Museum, but even that I like too: it is a kind of screw or like a lathe driveshaft, totally in harmony with the interior.
    Laughing at Death
    Much has been said about the Americans’ lack of a sense of mortality. The other evening in Harlem, in a night-spot called Baby Grand where jazz is played, a very famous black comic started his piece by joking about the death of Errol Flynn, amid widespread sniggering; then he told a crude joke about Flynn’s death and the funeral, again amid general hilarity. Another continual topic for the black comic’s satire and humour is the racial question, the fight against the segregationists.
    Olivetti
    Adriano Olivetti has been to New York in the last few days and bought Underwood, which had been in trouble for some time. From now on Olivetti will produce goods in America using the Underwood name, thus avoiding customs problems. Underwood’s shares are not quoted on the Stock Exchange at present but now it seems as though they will come back on to the list. That idiot Segni, 30 when he was here at the press conference, an American journalist asked him what he thought about the infiltration of Olivetti into Underwood’s shares, and he replied: ‘A big firm like Underwood will certainly not have anything to fear from a small concern like our own Olivetti!’
    At Prezzolini’s
    23 Nov.
    At dinner chez Prezzolini 31 who had invited me when I was still in Italy to come to his little cell on the sixteenth floor, already described many times, to enjoy his famous skills as cook and host. Also present is Mrs [Sheila] Cudahy, widow of the Marquis Pellegrini, a Catholic and Vice President of Farrar Straus, and a Hungarian count, Arady, if I caught the name right, author of a biography of Pius XI. After days and days of meeting only Jews, this mixing with reactionary Catholics is a not unpleasant distraction. Naturally, alongside Prezzolini, the Hungarian count, who is a Catholic liberal, admirer of the moderate Lombard aristocracy of the nineteenth century, actually seems more like a comrade to me. Extremely interesting conversation in which the count proves the continuity of the line going from Pius XI to John XXIII, a line which however has still not