Introduction to Memos

In his last book, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino details five indispensable qualities inherent, but still requiring protection and nurturing, to literature: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. At the eve of his death in 1985, Calvino believed these universal values ensured the survival of literature into the next millennium as they represent impressions that only literature can offer.

Now, at the beginning of the third millennium, it is apparent that despite the technology boom of the 1990s and subsequent explosion of new media art, Calvino's qualities still hold true. This Web site attempts to demonstrate the five memos to better explain their application to literature and art. For each memo, in addition to an emblem and analogy from everyday life, the example and corresponding graphics are meant to evoke the quality in reference to Internet literature and art in an effort to substantiate its modern relevance.

All that this Web site incorporates - the design and choices for emblems, analogies, examples, and graphics - should reflect my personal aesthetic, which I think is best described in terms of a children's book. As a children's book strives to teach,
I seek to learn from all of my literary and artistic preferences. Effective books for children are meant to inspire the imagination, and encourage readers to think differently and remain open-minded. The poetry and prose that I appreciate and the visual arts that I enjoy have done just that.