Heavyweight postmodernists face off

I don't know very much about either Italo Calvino or Paul Auster, and although I (so far) like Calvino - I think his dissection of the process of writing and reading insightful yet funny - and I (so far) don't like Paul Auster - he is cruel, in New York Triology the readers and characters are pawns in an apparently meaningless game for Auster's pleasure alone, I think they have quite a lot of similarities.

In If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Calvino imagines two writers obsessively watching the other while they write; and a third author frozen in writer's block because he can only think of a reader reading the perfect book he hasn't written. In Auster's Ghost Story in the triology, an author can only write when being watched by a character whose only purpose is to watch him.

So I was surprised to read Auster dismissing Calvino out of hand in this interview

(http://www.bluecricket.com/auster/links/secret.html).

Interviewer: Have you read Italo Calvino
Auster: A couple of books. I'm not a big fan ... I get bored with it.