“The scope of an epigram”: Quickness, Magic, and Marcovaldo’s Environmental Eye

"Quickness," the second lecture collected in Six Memos for the New Millenium, is an essential value linking the old and new millennium. In this essay, I examine how "quickness" is deployed in Italo Calvino’s celebrated Marcolvaldo stories, giving special attention to the primary elements of quickness: enchantment and attachment. Herein I suggest how quickness communicates impending cultural and environmental catastrophe and the slow violence wrought by consumer capitalism. Positioned as he was during the Great Acceleration-the post-war period of rapid growth during which human action overtook other earth systems as the main governing factor in global processes-Calvino’s recommendation for quickness has special urgency for us as we move further into the Anthropocene.