Italo Calvino, Why Read The Classics?

 I've really enjoyed things I've read by Calvino, particularly 'If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. . . ', but he obviously had a brain the size of the planet and this was too much for me. He writes making no allowances for ignorance (and why not?) and assumes his audience has a similar knowledge of literature. At one point he says about Raymond Queneau, who could be completely made up as far as I know, 'the image of this writer is well known to anyone with any knowledge of twentieth-century literature, and of French literature in particular.' I still enjoyed reading it as he is a compelling, whirlwind story teller, but each of the writers and books he is discussing could be as imaginary as his cities in 'Invisible Cities' . I'm still not entirely convinced this isn't all a work of fiction!