This is a collection of essays written throughout Calvino’s life about various classics. Many of them are formal papers, some are introductions to volumes of criticism about an author, some are retrospectives on an author, a couple are written to publicise an event pertinent to the author or the book. About all they have in common is that Calvino is amazingly erudite on all of them.

However, this lack of a common theme is what makes this a very frustrating book. Some pieces only skim the surface of what the text means while others explore one solitary aspect of a text in exhaustive detail. It’s presented chronologically through the history of literature but each article comes from a period that spans around thirty years. It’s an anthology masquerading as a history. There is nothing wrong with that, but for a book that professes to answer the question in its title, the whole shebang comes across as a little lacking.