Did he do a better job with it than Italo Calvino?

I respectfully disagree. I think the things you mentioned: his gift of humor, the tenderness of his relationship with his wife (and I would add, his brother-in-law), and his playfulness with form are all that needed space you're talking about to make the concept work. Sure, the concept is "meta", but he doesn't use that word in the novel, and I think his writing skills are just much more powerful than that.