The present essay is an extract from the book Calvino fa la Conchiglia: la costruzione di uno scrittore (“Calvino makes the Shell: the construction of a writer”). The “Shell” is a reference to the short story “The spiral”, which stands precisely halfway in this trajectory in which Calvino has built himself as a writer. On an autobiographical note, the narrative resumes scientific and cosmicomic themes which are dear to Italo Calvino. The same themes can be pointed in the parallel elements between the lives of Calvino and Primo Levi. The discovery of black holes could not pass by unnoticed by these two minds genuinely interested in science and literature, as well as in reflecting on solitude and the universe and, above all, in trying to figure out how the writing-craft could give shape, however much in provisional and limited ways, to creation and destruction processes.