(10 April 2017) In 1984, Italo Calvino was invited at Harvard University for a series of lectures. Before his death, he was able to complete five of the six lectures on the imaginative possibilities of language and literature. The lectures, collected as “Six Memos for the Next Millenium”, translated by Geoffrey Brock, are the focus of a public programme at the Centre for Fiction in New York City on April 11th. After the inaugural event with Jonathan Lethem on “Lightness” the first of the ‘Memos’ will be a conversation between Paolo Antonelli and Maria Popova on “Quickness, Enchantment, and the Joy of Storytelling” followed by Jonathan Blow’s discussion on Calvino’s influence on his videogames. The programme was organised by the Centre for Fiction in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of New York. Jonathan Blow is a programmer who is interested in video games and the expansion of the mind. Blow is known for the games ‘The Witness’ and ‘Braid’ both of which received critical acclaim. Blow is also partnered with the Indie Fund, an initiative for creative developers to grow independently. He often talks in conferences and lectures at universities to promote game design as a form of art. (Red)

POSTMODERN CREATIONS

For nearly 10 years, Blow has been conquering the video game market with his postmodern creations. He began with Braid in 2008 which nearly 1 million people played to completion, followed by the highliy-anticipated ‘The Witness’ in 2016. Of his most recent release, The Guardian stated “It may be helpful, in fact, to think of Jonathan Blow as the Thomas Pynchon of gaming and of ‘The Witness’ as his ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’.