Amazon.com
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration--"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.

The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches--stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition--with explorations of how and why we read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space." Book Description
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver

Italo Calvino’s masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book’s central character.

Based on a witty analogy between the reader’s desire to finish the story and the lover’s desire to consummate his or her passion, IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book—IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER, by Italo Calvino, of course—are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another—an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (132)

Innovative and unique
A innovative novel about the reader-writer relationship in which Calvino encourages each one of us to think about the activity of reading, to do so, Calvino turns the reader into a character and makes him (or is it me?) interact with the writer, the non-reader and the other reader. Calvino also puts beginnings of novels in-between the reader's story and are in those that he shows how talented and flexible he is, he changes his prose, tone and style on everyone of them, in an - successful - attempt to make us believe that they were all written by different authors.
At some point you'll realize that Calvino is actually playing with your ability as a reader, he dares you to keep reading no matter how frustrating it is to be interrupted right after the story gets interesting, to be left wondering what's going to happen next, and never get an answer, but if you keep going, if you carry on going further into the world of dead-ends, mirrors and mirages that Calvino creates you'll realize how worthy it is to get lost on his masterful labyrinth.

4.5 out of 5

not so much judging by cover...
as by title.Calvino's novel is bizarre and entertaining, though it has some regrettable/compromising scenes.he utilizes the basic idea of the "nested story," if you can call it that, which is much like nested dolls, but definitely better.

Challenge Your Mind: a dream presented in words
I first read this book about 12 years ago and it truly was like nothing I had ever read before. This book may not appeal to a broad selection of individuals as it is not an easy read, nor can it be classified as standard or traditional story-telling.
I recently asked a co-worker who is passionate about reading and devours books, to give it a read and jot down her thoughts. Her comments reminded me of my own reaction, 12 years ago.

"The book is brilliant and exhausting.Reading this book requires a firm commitment from the reader.One cannot fly across the words picking up the gist.Each and every written word of this book requires the reader's undivided attention.If that attention strays for even a moment, one must go back, pick up the thread, and forge ahead.Yet, the book is not "heavy" in that the story is quite light-hearted with overtones of humour.What makes it such an intense read, then?
The changing genres.Each "story" within the novel is written in a completely different style and voice.Almost as though they had been written by different authors.
And there is no coasting allowed.The reader must always be on top of the changing tempo, mood, etc.
The author has uncanny insight into the thought processes of a person who is engaged in the act of reading.There are "AHA" moments.
Who ever thinks about the process of reading?Italo Calvino does, obviously.As well as the act of writing.And the relationship between author and reader - individuals unknown to each other yet strangely and clearly very much in each others' thoughts.
The book is an emotional roller coaster - one feels amused, intrigued, frustrated, puzzled, humbled, exhausted.
After this, my next read will have to be mindless fiction!"

If you are looking for something completely different, and are up for a challenge, then let Italo Calvino send you into this dream.

If on a winter's night a traveler... Review
This was the first Italo Calvino novel that I read, and I partly wish that I would have started with anoter one of his books.While I enjoyed the book, the pace seemed to drag at times and could get haphazard and easily displace a reader.The ending did tie up the lose ends, but I felt that it could have taken a more direct approach.

I enjoyed the book being written in the second-person, as it brought you into the book as a protaganist, and by in certain parts I almost wished that I were reading the novel that was being read by you (the Reader) rather than the book that I had in my hands.

one of the great modern experiments with the novel
Italo calvino's fascinating study of the novel which confronts the reader in a very direct fashion is one of the best books of the last 50 years.. It is right up in the same category as marquez' 'one hundred years of solitude', in my humble opinion.. Despite the constant shifting and shuffling of stories the book somehow maintains a whole, a brilliant structure.. I would highly recommend this book for anyone willing to delve into the form of the novel and how different stories can be told simultaneously and actually increase your love of reading.. ... Read more

Amazon.com
One of the warmest and gentlest collections of stories by Calvino, and one of the most grounded in the real world. Lovely and elegant prose that lolls in your imagination like a story whispered into your ear on late spring day.Book Description

Customer Reviews (8)

Laudable observations of life
"Difficult Loves" is a collection of four sets of stories, each set revolving around a particular theme or setting. Calvino's perspective and style remain constant, however, as he navigates effortlessly between a disparate set of characters and situations. The hallmark of Calvino's perspective is his ability to take small "slices of life", understand them in great detail, and convert them into fascinating and gripping tales. The attraction to his stories is heightened by the occasional recognition of, and correlation to, the plethora of complex feelings aroused by these small and innocuous happenings. The fact that these feelings are so often buried in our subconscious and never played out recognizably indicate how acute an observer and analyst Calvino really is.

"The Adventure of a Soldier", a part of the last set of stories ("Stories of Love and Loneliness"), is a beautiful example of Calvino's keen observational faculties. In this story, a man embarks on a complex and courageous mental (and somewhat physical) journey, on the basis of a perceived physical contact with a fellow passenger on a train. Such is the honesty of Calvino's account of the soldier's emotions, that the reader can almost palpably feel the various contacts with the co-passenger, while sympathizing, if not empathizing, with the soldier's state of mind. This story is also a great illustration of the use of dramatic arc as a story-writing tool, especially to connect seemingly disjointed ideas or states.

The one serious drawback of this book is that while it manages to avert becoming platitudinal, it nonetheless becomes increasingly monotonous with the passage of each story. Calvino's disposition to simplicity and lucidity become his greatest failing as the novelty of his perspective wears off. Thus, overall, this is a book definitely worth reading, but best read in a piecemeal fashion to avoid weariness.

These Stories Stay With You
I read Difficult Loves a month ago and found that the stories in this book have staying power. Italo Calvino conjures up vivid imagery to accompany magical and unsettling stories. His story telling abilities are such that he reminds readers of long forgotten sensations. We feel the marvel and anxiety of two children who happen upon a property that is both enchanting and disturbing. We experience the elation of a man who is new to glasses and his disappointment upon realizing he found only a temporary reprieve from his same old life. Another story that opens with a leathery old man warning a weary traveler against crossing a mountain pass is one of the most powerfully written tales in the book. Difficult Loves is worth rereading.

Glimpses of exceptional ordinary lives...
Difficult Loves provides a comprehensive look at the art of storytelling, and its ability to expose the subtle emotions and personalities of everyday life.Calvino is particularly adept at honing in on a definitive moment, or succession of moments in the lives of his characters, and capturing the surprising shifts of relation and consciousness that occur suprisingly and spontaneously.The last section in the book, Stories of Love and Loneliness, shows Calvino at his most artful, examining the ways that certain types of people experience life and love.An earlier reviewer pointed out that everyone can find something to connect with in these stories.This is true in an even deeper sense, namely, that within the narration, sparkling moments of truth are revealed about the workings of the human mind, and they can only be read with a consistently deepening respect for the author and his art.There is a confessional quality to the work as well, and Calvino hints at his own obsessions and deviancies and shortcomings as a thinker.This authorial honesty conforms well with the subjects of the stories, all of which are betrayed in a state of almost disconcertingly fallible humanity.These are the anti-heros, the heros of everyday life and love.With Difficult Loves, Calvino maps out another essential area of human experience, and does it with a simple beauty that belies the complexity of his grand project.

Most of us can identify with at least one of these stories
This collection of stories represents some of Calvino's best early work (the stories were originally compiled in two books from 1949 and 1958). Those who have read "The Baron in the Trees" (from 1957) will recognize the style at work here. The book burgeons with short stories, 28 in all divided into four sections, and each one includes a discovery of some sort as well as a reflection on the most bizarre of human emotions: love.
The stories contained in the book's first section, "Riviera Stories", seem to have political subthemes. Many deal with the haves and have nots and their interactions. "The Enchanted Garden" tells of two children that happen along a seemingly deserted villa to discover a utopia or a dystopia - are the people who live in such luxury happy?; "A Goatherd at Luncheon" explores the gaps between the rich and the poorer classes when the man of the house invites the goat herder to lunch; In "Big Fish, Little Fish" a very capable young diver comes across an astonishing motherload of fish along with a sobbing sunbather who says she's "unlucky in love", but every fish the boy pulls out seems to have problems - the downside of a bonanza; "Lazy Sons" traces a day in the life of two boys who refuse to work in spite of the fulminations of their hard-working parents.
The next section, "Wartime Stories", not surprisingly, contains the most violent and disturbing stories of the book. "Hunger at Bévara" explores the desperation of a village caught between two fronts and the hero Bisma who helped save the village, at least temporarily; "Going To Headquarters" plays with expectations as the tensions between two men, one who might be a spy, and the other who may be his executioner, heighten; "One of the Three Is Still Alive" probably qualifies as the book's most disturbing story. A man thrown into a deep pit by the enemy discovers that the dead bodies of his comrades broke his fall, he then tries to escape from the pit; "Animal Woods" is both comedic and tragic. A man tries to shoot a looting German soldier but the livestock of his village keeps interfering.
The third section, "Postwar Stories" deals with a desperate world, one with limited resources and where almost anything goes. "Theft in a Pastry Shop" tells the hilarious story of criminals who suddenly find themselves on a gluttonous rampage during a robbery; "Dollars and the Demimondaine" explores a couple's quest for dollars amongst a crowd of rather lusty American sailors. This section deals with the desperate climate of a postwar country. As people suffer some take a no holds barred approach while others find themselves giving up or asking what's it worth.
The book's final, and longest, section, "Stories of Love and Loneliness" is probably the most intriguing. It presages somewhat Calvino's later book "Mr. Palomar". The style in this section is deeply character driven, and the thoughts and motivations of characters get explained with amazing detail. "The Adventure of a Soldier" follows a soldier's conquest of a woman seated next to him on a train. He cautiously explores her body to gauge her reaction. Did she pull away? Is she acquiesing? "The Adventure of a Bather" explores how some see nakedness as a humiliation, so much so that they risk death rather then being seen unclothed. "The Adventure of a Photographer" depicts a seemingly non-obsessive man's all consuming obsession with capturing life through photographs. He's too engaged to even notice the interest of the beautiful woman acting as his subject; "The Adventure of a Nearsighted Man" shows just how much a pair of glasses can change one's life. The character can now recognize many things, but other people no longer recognize him. Even the woman he yearns for, and who he's known for years, doesn't recognize him with his glasses on.
"Difficult Loves" provides a suitable umbrella title to package these stories under. Many deal with love in its various forms: physical, emotional, spiritual, self, political, material. In nearly all cases the characters in the story have difficulty defining or requiting the love they have for others or things. The book explores the nebulous nature of desire and attraction to others and the inevitable hardships of bridging one's desires with reality. Throughout the book, Calvino's writing mesmerizes (even in translation) and pulls the reader in without mercy. The character studies of the final section are incredible in their detail and ambition. It's amazing how much Calvino can cram into a ten page story. The range of emotions is also incredible. The stories evoke laughter, disgust, pity, shame, and of course love.
If you want a good read or want to study the art of the short story, look no further than this book by Calvino. It won't disappoint.

Delightful
First off, Italo Calvino is my favorite author and Difficult Loves is one of my favorites of his books.A collection of short stories, as a whole, the book ranks among Calvino's most imaginative and magical works.

The collection really displays Calvino's virtuosity as a writer with subjects ranging from war to a solitary woman swimming.Each is magical in its own special way.I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading--it serves as an excellent introduction to one of the most creative minds of 20th-century literature. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (19)

To be halved or not to be halved...which is better?
The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount were my first reads of Calvino's.These two novella's in one book made a fine interlude into a long series I have been reading and one in which I needed a break from. As in the Viscount in The Cloven Viscount, the book has two halves...one of which I really enjoyed and the other I only partly enjoyed.

The Nonexistent Knight was superb!I absolutely loved it and found myself laughing out loud in hysterics.It was brilliant!However, I found it difficult to get into TCV.It didn't move as fluidly, didn't catch my attention and wasn't until about halfway through that I began to rather enjoy it and its philosophical underlinings.I highly recommend both, but I didn't feel TCV was at the same caliber as TNK.

Early Calvino
I can't share the same enthusiasm for these tales as so many other reviewers have expressed. These stories are only hints of the brilliance Calvino exhibits in his later tales. The two parable-like novellas are based on far-fetched premises (a Calvino trademark) -- the first an empty suit of armor that acts as the exemplary knight out of sheer will power; the second a viscount halved in combat into two surviving entities. It is fun to ponder the implications of these stories, particularly the story of the perfect knight who is physically non-existent but coheres through act of will, yet who lacks whatever it is that we call humanity. The Cloven Viscount is a more mundane and predictable tale that employs the old good-evil, id-ego, left-brain-right-brain paradigm. These stories offer an interesting glimpse into the developing genius that manifests itself more fully and artfully in Baron in the Trees, Cosmicomics, and Invisible Cities.

Missing the point
I've long meant to give Calvino a try as his name is always mentioned in the company of other magic realists and fabulists that I like. I decided on this one simply because I found a nice copy used. Unfortunately, I didn't like it very much and I wonder if I just got the wrong book to give Calvino a fair try.

This is two novellas that showcase why he's considered a magic realist, and they do meet at least my definition of that term. In "The Nonexistent Knight," the titular character Agilulf is indeed an empty suit of armor which even Charlemagne finds off-putting rather than unusual. After setting up that the Knight is about the most perfect of the paladins (so much so that his fellow paladins dread him), a meal discussion reveals that the incident on which his knighthood is based might be false, thus leading him on a quest to discover the virgin whom he rescued many years ago. A couple of other characters--including a Red Sonja-type maid who yearns for the knight because he is perfect in every respect but physicality--and a strange nun narrator who keeps inserting her voice add some side-trips to this search, but it's a strange fairy-tale that wraps up in the end but still leaves you wondering what it was all about.

"The Cloven Viscount" is even stranger, about a lord who was severed in half (down the middle) and in which each half survives, yet one side is all bad and the other is all good. The fact that I can't keep a bad Star Trek episode out of my mind the entire time I'm reading this is not a recommendation. More so than the first novella, I couldn't see what the point was. With both of these, it could be that it was simply lost in translation, or that I just wasn't open to the wonders of the stories.

I'd be willing to give Calvino another try, although I think I may ask around for recommendations before picking up the next book.

Knights and viscounts
Magical realism was never more magic than when Italo Calvino wrote it. While the two novellas "The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount" are early work, his quirky satire and strange fantasy are in fine form here. The best description of Calvino's writing is: fairy tales for adults, which are smart and funny at the same time.

"The Nonexistant Knight" opens with Charlemagne and his army preparing for a massive battle -- except that one knight named Agilulf is, technically, nonexistant. Okay, he's the very image of honor and chivalry, but he's also a walking empty suit of white armor. For some reason, Charlemagne doesn't seem disturbed by this.

Fortunately, Agilulf is able to do his job despite not existing; Calvino's meditations on this are outstanding. Because of his ultra-perfection, Agilulf ends up attracting a naive young soldier, a feisty warrior woman, and an odd young knight who is looking for the Order of the Holy Grail. A Shakespearean tangle of sorts emerges before things start to sort themselves out...

"The Cloven Viscount" is a simpler work: A viscount is hit by a Turkish cannonball that somehow splits him in half. Surprisingly, he's not dead -- they're able to save the right half of his body. But when the right half goes home, it becomes increasingly clear that it only has half the personality as well. And unfortunately, it's the evil half.

As the various peasants try to deal with the viscount's vicious acts, the left half shows up as well. As it happens, the left half is the good half. He's also, despite his goody-goody personality, as much of a menace as the evil side. Can the two halves somehow get back into a whole man, or will they drive everyone else nuts?

Italo Calvino's work is always a bit whimsical, but there is actual substance under the whimsy. For example, Agilulf is rigidly devoted to protocol and form, because he has nothing inside him. I'm pretty sure every person has met someone like Agilulf. Or, for that matter, glimpsed the two halves that lie inside every human being.

Don't think it's all stuffy philosophy, though. One of Calvino's greatest talents was to make a hugely entertaining story that never became preachy, only funny.While the subtext of "Viscount" is obvious, "Knight" is a sort of satire on medieval chivalry tales. And that is where Calvino excels; "Viscount," while good, is a bit heavy-handed in places. But his macabre, slightly strange sense of humor keeps it from being goofy or preachy.

His writing is formal, clear and evocative and starkly pretty, with only some key details. But it is peppered with funny lines and undignified characters. One of the best lines of "Knight" is at the beginning, where Charlemagne comments (entirely seriously), "Well, for someone who doesn't exist, you seem in fine form."

Calvino's offbeat parables and satires are always excellent, and his early pair of novellas are no exception. Funny, strange and thought-provoking, these are a pair of modern classics.

A Good Intro to Calvino
This book by Calvino is certainly more conventional than something like "Cosmicomics," yet I found myself enjoying it more. Perhaps it's the feeling of flow a more developed plot brings or maybe it's just taken this long to get into Calvino's idiom. Even here, I found myself getting more into "The Cloven Viscount" than the
"Nonexistent Knight." Whether that's because I finally got into Calvino's writing style or one story is better than the other remains to be seen.

"Knight" is a cool fable in any case. Its satire, however, can be slightly off putting. For example, the first time we meet the female protagonist, she's peeing in a lake! Not a great first impression - but Calvino must have meant for that to be the case. Perhaps it's a joke or satire of courtly love. The ending "revelation" doesn't seem to have the impact I think Calvino meant it to have. However, in retrospect it makes sense. I do, however, love the character of "Agilulf" or perhaps "A Gulf" or emptiness, too. It's interesting to contrast him with the Good Un of the following novella.

"Viscount" was more enjoyable, though. I like its violence and thoughtfulness. One would expect one's sympathies to be with good in a good vs. evil fight. However, Calvino shows how even good is half of a whole. Moreover, it's fascinating how much easier it is to understand evil than good. Such themes and vital imagery make this a visceral and intelligent story.

Fables all, but good ones. A great place to start reading Calvino. Perhaps the rest of his work will make more sense after this introduction.

... Read more

Amazon.com
Italo Calvino cast his lofty thoughts toward the pending millennium long before the rest of us. Now that the zeitgeist has caught up with him, it seems a good time to revisit his Six Memos for the Next Millennium, an investigation into the literary values that he wished to bequeath to future generations. Calvino, the author of Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and other postmodern fictional works, was to deliver these five "memos" (there was to be a sixth) as Harvard's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1985-86, but he died before doing so. These lectures are dense, rigorous, and seemingly full of contradiction. The first is a paean to lightness (though "light like a bird," as Paul Valéry wrote, "and not like a feather"). Lightness is followed by quickness (without "presum[ing] to deny the pleasures of lingering"), exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. The perfect antidote to writerly laziness.Book Description
Six Memos for the Next Millenium is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watch-words for out appreciation of Calvino himself.

What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, toe each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.  A sixth lecture, on consistency, was never committed to paper, and we are left only to ponder the possibilities.  With this book, he gives us the most eloquent defense to literature written in our century--a fitting gift for the next millennium. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Calvino manifesto
This book is a collection of talks on writing Calvino was preparing as a series of documents specifying some important keys of literature that he felt needed to be recorded as crucial elements of literary tradition.Indeed, in his essay "Visibility," Calvino brings up his concern for the future of imagination and literature in a world so full of prefabricated imagery, where images are provided rather than solicited.While his initial impulse was to write six lectures, he evidently reported at one point of his process that he had ideas for eight, but in the end he only completed five.In her introduction, Esther Calvino clarifies that she decided to keep the title true to Italo's original intention and publish the series under the original title, despite the missing sixth.

In the lectures themselves, Calvino provides the kind of insight and fascination with the making of literature that fuels so many of his best books.Rather than come across as a manifesto of his own brilliance, as the premise may sound, Calvino spends a lot of time in admiration of the work of other writers, from classics like Ovid and Dante to colleagues and contemporaries, like Francis Perec and Douglas R. Hofstadter.The lectures are of course sometimes punctuated with personal details about his own writing processes, but I found them very inviting and revealing about the ideas he was trying to point out.

Each lecture dedicates itself to an aspect of literature that Calvino finds crucial: "Lightness," or the aspect of language that speaks directly to a reader and is not always weighed down with intellectual metaphor but with direct communication; "Quickness," or the immediacy of literature - the way it cuts through random detail to get to the necessary; "Exactitude," or the precision of language (and when it needs imprecision); "Visibility," or the power of imagery to convey ideas; and "Multiplicity," or the complexity of content.

Calvino is a writer who has always presented a kind of fascinating enigma.His works is spectacularly visual, and while crucially uncategorizable in its sense of being not easy to nail down in the area of metaphor or theme (something that Calvino no doubt worked quite strenuously at, clear when he talks about a poem's meaning in "Exactitude" as being "not fixed, not definitive, not hardened into mineral immobility, but alive as an organism"), it is also quite accessible and always an enjoyable read.Calvino mastered the art of experimentalism that did not read as though one needed to be schooled in the traditions of literature to understand his intents.Though Calvino clearly wants to offer his lectures as guides for the necessities of literature for posterity, it is also a manifesto on the man's own aesthetic, though it is not a manifesto that demands the agreement of others, or the demand that others follow in his footsteps.Though Calvino does have moments of criticism, as when he accuses schools of dispensing "the culture of the mediocre," which I take to mean the conveying of literature as something with set meaning that we must all learn and emulate (or at least parrot back), and also directs a barb or two at the publishing industry when he supports experimentalism with the following caveat: "The demands of the publishing business are a fetish that must not be allowed to keep us from trying out new forms."In this lecture series, Calvino presents himself quite wise and worldly, but also quite direct and earnest.A reading of this work at the start of any literature course on almost any level of schooling might provide a stiff reminder that literature is a work of passion, not just analysis, and it also works in the realm of paradox, as Calvino himself presents--that it is structure in literature that is needed to make it transcend structure, that one needs to be as aware of the lack of success in literature as much as success to see the stuff of great literature.

Calvino's last `memo,' "Consistency," was never written, but I could only imagine where he would have gone with it, which was always a strength of Calvino's work.The last lecture seems to bring to a full circle many of things he brings up through the series, but Calvino's work always found a way to extend beyond the full circle.Perhaps, in the end, the consistency needs to be ours, to make sure that this wisdom does not go to waste.

Five Illuminating Literary Values
I found my copy of this small but elegantly written gem of a book in our local second-hand bookshop. I had long been intrigued by Calvino's writing, and snatched up the copy with delight. I was not disappointed.

The short note at the beginning of the book, by the author's wife, tells about the choice of title, the preparation of the material by the author for the Charles Edward Norton Lectures at Harvard University in the US, and its translation by Patrick Creagh. Calvino completed writing only five of the six lectures, and these form the chapters of the book - Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity. The sixth, which was to be called "Consistency", he intended to write on his arrival in Cambridge, but Calvino died before making that journey from Italy to Harvard University.

Calvino draws on areas as diverse as mythology, poetry, art, science and history to illustrate his theses, and brings fresh insights to, for example, the story of Perseus and Medusa. A few small extracts from the chapter on various aspects of Lightness will serve to illustrate this diversity of supporting material:

First, from poetry. "... there is a lightening of language whereby meaning is conveyed through a verbal texture that seems weightless, until the language itself takes on the same rarefied consistency... Emily Dickinson, for instance... A sepal, petal, and a thorn// Upon a common summer's morn-// A flask of Dew-A Bee or two-... "

Then, from computer science: "It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware. But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more complex programs. The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with `bits' in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits."

Despite the fact that this is a work of non-fiction, Calvino's skill as a master storyteller is evident. The chapter entitled "Quickness", for instance, begins with a fascinating and very concise story of necrophilia and magic. His exposition on the technique of Jorge Luis Borges, near the end of this chapter, reads like a story itself. For anyone interested in the craft of the short-short story, or flash fiction, this chapter should prove edifying.

Several passages from works of European writers are used as examples throughout the book. I was grateful that these were always accompanied by their English translations. For example, extracts from the writings by Leopardi, Musil, and Valéry were presented in the original Italian, German, and French, in the chapter entitled "Exactitude" together with their English translations.

In the "Multiplicity" chapter I encountered the notion that every object, no matter how apparently insignificant, is the center of an infinitely expanding network of relationships. Wow - what an immensely powerful antidote to writer's block.

This is a wonderful and thought-provoking book.

The infinite writing
In the last chapter of this meditation on writing Calvino writes about the value of ' multiplicity'. He considers what the 'hyper-novel' might be, some vast conjunction of Encyclopedia and Bible which tells in some way the ongoing story of the Universe as a whole. He seems to be suggesting a kind of writing which is open and unending, a kind of infinite blog that goes on along with the Universe. I do not know if he asks the question of what happens when the very finite writer of the hyper-novel has his last word. Calvino died before completing the intended sixth lecture in which the Literary value to be examined was ' consistency'.
Calvino, is a writer of great ideas and imagination. And his work provides suggestions of new ways of thinking and perceiving.

il futurismo
A new italian Futurist Manifesto, but this time a good one.

nurturing concepts for all creative genres
It was a an Italian virtuoso contrabassist who told me to read these Lectures. Stefano plays all the arduously difficult new music literature for the contrabass. He travels with a violoncello,so he can play all thatrepertoire as well. When he plays this music he often ponders Calvino, fiveprimary conceptual corridors toward what he thought of as literature,butmusic as well can be contemplated with these ideas. "Lightness",well music has a density, Mozart played games with it, and interpretingMozart can be a treatise in the dialectic,the transformations and timbralmodulations of lightness to heaviness.,ask any violinist.Calvino of courseexpounds on Kundera's popular book, on the weight of the lifeworld ofliving in the East,the coal-dusted passageways,or of a fallen love,beguntransgressivly there as well. Dante is a frequent pilgrim(example) here thelightness of snow falling imperceptibly on the mountainside."Quickness", but not how fast things move,(our Silicon Valley)odious airjets that may puncture the ozone layer,or violins, but thequickness of an image to transform our consciousness,to lighten it up fromthe cruel oppression of citylife.That's poetry. I think.Robert Musil ishere as well, the complexity,the numbering imagination of his transitorywork to modernity the opening two decades of this century,his "ManWithout Qualities" a seemingly endless work.And Gedda's "AwfullMess. . . " on the street a probing detective novel of complexity of amurder in Rome,on the way to the Labor Bureau of the Roman Government. Inmusic I frequently think of Visibility when I have nothing to transport meinto the bowels of a Bruckner or an Antheil Symphony,what do I see in themusic,like the weight of this century in the "Largo" from the"Fifth Symphony" of Shostakovich.Multiplicity as well anotherCalvino chapter is here,sprouting its wings like a peacock, all around usif we only have the patience for it. To phanthom and explore all images ofa work as looked at through a plexiglass. We seldom do that. How exact isart, "Exactitude" is what Leonardo di Vinci lived his life with,rewrote almost everything,Calvino tells us, as Leopardi,the Essays. ... Read more

Amazon.com
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take. Book Description

Customer Reviews (83)

for aspiring writers and folks looking for the poetry in the prose
5 stars for brilliance, 3 stars for enjoyment.

The expectation that had been set for me when I added this to my reading list?"This is the book where the city is the story."That said, I was expecting more narrative than what I found here.(Call me a traditionalist but I expect a bit of characterization and plot.)As a "book", I didn't much care for Invisible Cities -- but I would add it to my bookshelf as a good lesson in how to write about places.There is some pretty potent imagery and interesting wordplay at work in here.

Great texture for a paperback.
This book is such a nice, small size, and it feels great!The cover isn't terribly interesting, but it's enough to intrigue the person next to you on the train and make you look reasonably intelligent.

Also, the sections in the text are often small enough to read one or two during a reasonable commute.Since it is so small, you might even be able to fit it in your pocket.Quite convenient.

I do have a few small gripes about the book, however.The paper seems rather cheap as it is very thin.The typeface is a little too thick, also, the combination of which sometimes makes it difficult to read.

A Midnight Scent, A Cloudy Vista
I had never read any Calvino before this spring and loved If On a Winter's Night a Traveler.Calvino writes like a more patient Borges, exploring the passages one at a time branching off the main cave gallery.In this breathtakingly elegant work, Calvino shows us cities rife with contradiction, told by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan, with dialogues bookending the city descriptions.The short, meditative reflections on imagined cities gives the book a nice cadence, a postcard-view of the city, usually with its photo-negative or reflection or inversion presented afterwards.Calvino is clearly a master at this type of wordsmanship, while remaining true to his genuine emotion of decline, loss and heartbreak.At one point, the Khan asks Polo about the city of his birth, Venice: "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it.Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little." (87)Most of the stories focus on the various perceptions of cities which differ depending upon how one comes to the city, which part is glimpsed first, whether one grows up in the city or merely travels through it.Overall, a wonderful collection of descriptions, a jewelry-box of imagined delights, a phantasmagoria.

Like No Book You've Ever Read
In architecture school, I had to draw these cities from Calvino's descriptions.His amazingly descriptive and yet vauge recollections made for a great jumping off point.

Each chapter of 'Invisible Cities' is an evocative recollection of a fanciful and fantastic city.The descriptions are perfectly distilled, strikingly vivid yet dreamy prose photographs.

Loosen your ties to reality and let this book take you.Read it uncritically and let the scenery wash over you.There is no plot.There are no characters.This is a book about the intersection of reality, language, and the senses.It isn't to be missed.

thought-provoking
Great book, the kind you can read many times and still come up with something new. Worth not just reading but spending time thinking about.

The only reason it's not five stars is that I felt it limited women (who tended to be somehow half-sequestered in windows and verandas and what not) to a single role while men seemed to be the explorers, the out-and-about-ers. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (4)

Dealing with problems
Italo Calvino's specialty was magical realism -- treeborne nobility, tarot stories, and noblemen chopped in half. But "The Watcher and Other Stories" displays his talents in grittier, more hopeless stories and characters.

The title story involves Amerigo, a rather naive young Communist who is employed as a "Watcher" at a hospital; he keeps an eye on the patients to make sure they are all aware enough to vote. (He spends most of his spare time feuding with his pregnant girlfriend)

As he watches during the voting time, the nuns bring by people who are mentally retarded, deformed, horribly ill, or all three. Some make the best of their dreary lives (like the handless man), and some aren't aware enough to. And what he sees changes Amerigo's way of thinking.

"Smog" is about a pitiful young man who arrives in the city, and immediately becomes pathologically freaked out by all the smog, dust and grime. Even when his elegant celebrity girlfriend spends weekends with him, he can't think about anything except the dust.

And finally, "The Argentine Ant" has a young couple and baby arriving in a country cottage -- only to get invaded by ants that evening. They try desperately to eradicate the pests (which are in every house in the area) but the ants may have an unlikely ally.

Compared to Calvino's warm, slightly surreal stories, "The Watcher and Other Stories" seems like a rather bleak book, without any solid endings to the storylines. The first two are simply dark and a bit depressing, more in the vein of his "Path to the Spiders' Nests," while the third is just tragicomic.

But Calvino's rich, slightly dreamlike writing style is very much intact here, and the more optimistic tone can be found in the socialite, who sees beauty where her boyfriend sees only squalor. And while the descriptions of the sick, deformed and mentally retarded are disturbing, they're also quite sad -- Calvino never forgets that these are all people, who need love, and who were simply unluckier than most.

The main characters vary a lot -- Amerigo is naively Communistic, and rather irresponsible, while the "Smog" guy is rather stagnant (and clearly has OCD as well). But the couple in the last story are rather nice, especially since everybody has had this sort of harrowing situation.

"The Watcher And Other Stories" is a look at Calvino's darker, more meditative stories. This is realism, not magical realism.

Not his best
The Watcher and Other Stories is a collection of three of Calvino's stories put together in a single volume for no obvious reason other than they are by the same author.As a fan of Calvino's work, I have to admit that this is the closest I've come to describing one of his books as "tedious."However, in each story Calvino still wields his pen with an imagination that few can even come close to matching.Each narrative effectively brings the reader to a different world filled with well-rounded characters and unique circumstances--most notably an ant-infested neighborhood.

While not the most engrossing of Calvino's works, The Watcher and Other Stories is still worth picking up for fans of the breathtakingly creative author.

Nice Collection
The Watcher and Other Stories is a collection of three different but thematically interlinked stories.I personally thought that the title story was the most intriguing.The Watcher deals with our protagonist "watching" the voting procedures in a home for invalids/deranged/etc.The home is a mini city and becomes a type of microcosm of Italian society.Smog deals again with the futility of human life through pollution.The Argentine Ants is a type of mock horror story.All of the above are extremely well written and executed.Although I did enjoy this book, I would suggest that readers unfamiliar with Calvino try some of his masterpieces first, and then move onto the minutiae of works such as these.

How humanity copes
The three long stories that comprise this book at first appear to have been slapped together without much concern for whether they work well with one another.Not only were they written at different points in Calvino'scareer -- "The Watcher" is from 1963, "Smog" from 1958 and "The ArgentineAnt" from 1952, but they don't even get the continuity that a singletranslator might have been able to provide.That's why it's so surprisingthat a common theme in these works emerges anyway -- namely, that existenceis futile and farcical and yet also must be cherished because, in the end,what else is there?

The protagonists of these stories are allseeking ways to somehow make the futility bearable or even meaningful. "The Watcher" portrays Amerigo Ormea, an election observer assigned to apolling place that is actually a mental institution.Amerigo's long-heldpolitical convictions are, if not wavering, then at least punch-drunk fromhaving been slapped around so much.The momentous changes once foreseen byhim have not materialized, and as a result he is trying to believe thatchange is a gradual and even mundane process, a matter of "doing as much asyou could, day by day." Calvino uses the asylum and its inhabitants ametaphor for democratic society and its odd creatures.In doing so hedisplays a keen talent for showing up grand arguments like whetherdemocracy is viable for the absurd squabbles they may be at their core --like whether a ballot sheet has been properly folded, or whether an armlessman's vote counts if someone has to go into the voting booth with him. Amerigo struggles to accept that such grotesque banality is the very stuffof democracy.This struggle is sometimes involving and insightful andsometimes not.The force of the story is somewhat blunted by too manyphilosophical musings on Calvino's part.He may mean to send up thediehard's tendency toward philosophical musings, but they are droning andoften repetitive and not particularly exciting to read.Nevertheless, "TheWatcher" has a lot to offer.In the other two stories, the maincharacters also must persevere in the face of circumstances they cannotcontrol."Smog" demonstrates an acute awareness of environmental perilthat seems somewhat ahead of its time.But as in "The Watcher," Calvino'schief concern is how humanity copes.The main character has just moved tothe city and is overwhelmed by its filth.He washes his hands compulsivelyas he observes how the urbanites deal with a dirty fog that is intensifyingits grip on the city.One man simply makes the filth a part of himself,living and breathing it with hardly a thought.Another, a factory ownerand the worst polluter in the city, tries to redeem himself by funding "TheInstitute for the Purification of the Urban Atmosphere in IndustrialCenters."A worker in one of his factories "didn't try to evade all thesmoky gray around us, but to transform it into a moral value, an innercriterion."

Smog is substituted by ants in "The Argentine Ant." A young couple moves into a new home only to find that it -- and the homesof all their neighbors -- infested with millions of the unstoppableinsects.The young husband goes neighbor to neighbor in search of asolution.One has a garageful of insecticides and chemicals, and achuckling anecdote explaining the failure of each one.Another man rigselaborate deathtraps out of string and gasoline.The woman who rents thehouses out simply denies that the ants are a problem even as they bite heron the buttocks and crawl up her back.The town regularly sends out anexterminator, but the residents are convinced he is actually feeding theants as a way of keeping his job.In both "Smog" and "The Argentine Ant,"no one thinks to simply leave.There seems to be a tacit agreement amongthem that moving would only exchange one problem for another.Calvino'scharacters are inescapably grounded where they find themselves, learning tolive with that which they find unbearable.

This book providesample evidence of Calvino's skill and vision.It is definitely aworthwhile read. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (19)

Enjoyed this.
I have an older edition of this book. I quite enjoyed reading it. Of course, I more or less collect compilation of folktales and fairy tales.

Folk tales (and then some)
Italo Calvino is mostly known for being a brilliant magical realist. But he also collected two hundred Italian folk and fairy tales in "Italian Folktales," apparently because a publisher wanted a sort of Italian Grimm. The resulting collection is actually better than your average fairy tales -- full of the cute, bizarre and funny.

Basically, we have the usual collections of folk-tale oddities -- princesses and princes, talking animals, murderers, dragons, colourful peasants, ghosts, magical rings, bookworms, ogres, merchants, lots of money, wise professors, hunchbacks, people magically turned into dogs, and even an Italian version of Beauty and the Beast.

But there are also plenty of folktales in here that are outright weird: a kid with a goose that causes hands to stick to the holder, a young groom whose night in paradise has tragic consequences, a maid imprisoned in the sea, a girl transformed into a statue, the Queen of Luminous Souls, and a talking buffalo head. Even Jesus Christ and Saint Peter get to star in a longish story.

Fairy tales are always meant for kids, but folktales can be aimed at adults. And there's pretty much half-and-half in "Italian Folktales" -- Calvino includes some stories which are cute and have morals ("Don't be greedy, or a wolf will eat you"), but there are plenty that are weird, bizarre and grotesque (three dead men bowling with skulls).

Calvino can't include too much description, since most of these stories are straight-out fables. But he retells these stories with enchanting flair, funny dialogue and his knack for mixing the magical with the real. And the translator George Martin should get props for preserving the sparkling, spicy flavour of the original stories ("Cro! Cro! We come from brine/On gold and pearls we dine/Belsole's fair, as fair as day...")

These stories aren't the Brothers Grimm -- they're better. Calvino collected stories that were magical, horrifying and extremely funny, and "Italian Folktales" is a delightful, extremely fat book of folk stories.

What an odd delight
Italo Calvino is one of my favorite authors and if you are considering buying this book because he is yours as well, I would say approach with caution.This isn't If on a winter's night a traveler or Invisible Cities.Calvino may have had a hand in the final print version of the tales, but this book in no way reflects his other writings.

That isn't to say I do not recommend this book.

If you are a parent, these make wonderful bedtime stories- though most are simply amazingly strange.If you enjoy reading odd little folk tales, I am certain you'll find most of these original.I took a class in folk tales and I have always enjoyed finding new ones and finding connections to other tales, this one is simply in a class of it's own.

The tales themselves are usually funny and where funny fails, oddness prevails.Additionally, these are all short, good for quick reads.

Hope this was helpful.

Cornucopia of Tiny Tales
This collection of Italian folktales, collected and rewritten by Italo Calvino, is a cornucopia of tiny tales.The 200 stories (twice the number in that other great collection of Italian tales - the Decameron) of this 700 page book sparkle with wit and provide insight into the minds of the poorer classes of medieval and premodern society.

The tales are, according to the introduction, from previous collections made by folklorists, mostly during the 19th century, when people still made a hobby out of collecting such things.The stories come from all around Italy and each has, at its conclusion, the name of the region from which it was drawn.I am under the impression that Italo Calvino rewrote them from their original dialects into standardized Italian.He also added his own special touch, distilling, trimming and rewriting them as only a master could. The English translation by George Martin is taut and clean and makes the read all the more enjoyable.

The book includes an introduction by the author, somewhat scholarly in nature.It also has a note for each story discussing technical issues and origins.It could be used as a scholarly reference for folklore studies but it is a delight to read just for pure pleasure.If you are looking for a book of fairytales for your children this collection is probably on par with the Grimm Brothers or the Red Fairy Tale Book.It was written, however, considerably later, in 1956.The book shares with these collections (their unexpurgated versions at least) a certain earthiness, an occasional tendency towards brutality and a distinct lack of political correctness.If you are offended by golden donkey dung, witches defenestrated, tarred and burned at the stake, or princesses killed by their husbands later resurrected andremarried to their repentant murderers, you might want to avoid this book.At the very least you might want to pick and choose which tales you read to your children.Not that the tales dwell on these things in detail but you will encounter them.You will also encounter the three little pigs (as geese), little Red Riding Hood as herself, a Snow White who falls in with thieves, a Sleeping Beauty awakened not by a prince but by her newborn child, and Aladdin, Ali Baba and Ulysses dressed up as merchants, peasants and monks. One can also hear vague echoes of celtic mythology, prehistoric magical rites and even a plot I find reminiscent of Gogol.

Two hundred stories is quite a few and while there are occasional variations on a theme, on the whole they remain remarkably fresh.Just when you think you've seen everything, a new plot twist comes along to enchant and amuse.

Well worth it!
I wanted to purchase this book for awhile.I am glad that I finally bought it.It is a large volume.I purchased the new hardcover as I expected to keep it for awhile.These are the old stories of Italy, both folklore and fairy tales.If you're a lover of either of those two types of stories and want to learn more about the culture of Italy, I would recommend this book to you. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (12)

Ok Book
This book traces Mr. Palomar's thoughts about various events.As the events or places that Palomar passively partakes in become funnier so do the thoughts of Mr. Palomar.The book isn't really totally conventional, or emotionally sweeping or anything but it evokes a certain feeling associated with a fictional train of thought, and then moralizes about this fictional line of thought at the end.

From what I could tell Mr. Palomar was meant to be sort of a banal character, with a topical knowledge of many subjects.I wonder what his thoughts would've been like reading books?So in conclusion I'm not really sure I got the point of this book, and the moralization that somehow Mr. Palomar is sort of dead.Or perhaps it's one of those meta-books, but meta-books aren't so good and mostly get by on font choice like some of this author's other books.

I think The book raised some interesting points in passing is what I can say about it.

When Aristotle Met James Thurber
The 27 reveries of Mr. Palomar are filled with paradox; in them we find gently profound ruminations on the cosmos as well as the embarrassments of ordinary human interaction.This is a book that makes us see the world around us in a different way.

Mr. Palomar, who shares the name of the observatory, is the emblem of the person as observer.Whether it is the ocean or the heavens, a cheese shop or an Aztec ruin, Mr. Palomar attempts to see and to comprehend what he sees.But the general theme of his attempts at observations is ultimately the failure, or at least the inadequacy, of his attempts.

Much of the book has an Aristotelian quality, which perhaps is not so surprising, considering that Mr. Palomar's enterprise, the attempt to understand the universe through careful observation, is Aristotle's approach at well.Much of the contemplation follows Aristotelian lines.Mr. Palomar is often immersed in Aristotelian efforts of categorization, of conceptually separating a part from the whole, and facing the question that looms so large in Aristotle: When can we derive the properties of the whole from the part, and when is the opposite true?Then again, the reader is reminded of Aristotle's "Parts of Animals" when Mr. Palomar describes the running giraffes and how each part of the giraffe's anatomy appears to be suited to a separate species, or when Mr. Palomar watches through his skylight as a gecko captures, ingests, and digests an insect.

But counterpoised with this, you have genuine "Walter Mitty" type moments when the real world interrupts the reverie.Mr. Palomar, waiting in a line in a cheese shop, is inspired by the actual cheeses he sees to construct a model world of cheese, and becomes so absorbed in this enterprise, that he at some point crosses over and mentally inhabits the model world.As in Thurber, the humor derives from the person who inhabits the imagined world having to deal with the sudden demands of the actual cheese shop.

One thing I recommend to a reader is, in reading through the sections (I guess one can refer to them as essays), to consider what causes Mr. Palomar to break off the contemplation.Sometimes, it is the intervention of the outside world.Sometimes it is that Mr. Palomar is overcome by a sort of vertigo at the immensity of space or time.Sometimes, Mr. Palomar hits upon a dualism, yes, we can view the object in such and such a way, but equally well in another way, and is unable to move beyond that point.By tracking these closing moments, one can best come to terms with Mr. Palomar's experience of failure.

Observing Mr. Palomar
Italo Calvino's short novel, "Mr. Palomar" (1983) is a thoughtful, philosophical work, elegantly written. As is sometimes the case with novels of ideas, the book is static with little in the way of action, drama, or character development.It is meditative with an overabundance of factual minutae in places with the result that neither the story nor the ideas come through well.

There are, nevertheless, a few good scenes in the book, good use of irony and ambiguity, and some provocative ideas. Thus, at the conclusion of a chapter, presenting Palomar's reflections from his terrace, he observes that "[i]t is only after you have come to know the surface of things, that you can venture to seek what is underneath....But the surface of things is inexhaustible."(p.55)This is stuff for thought. But it is buried here in too much tedium.

There is little in the way of plot in this book. Instead the book consists of a number of short vignettes, elaborately organized under an index at the conclusion. The vignettes involve the meditations of Mr. Palomar, named after the famous telescope, who is an observer of nature, people, and his mind.He is quiet and reserved and keeps aloof from the hurly-burly of the everyday.The episodes take place in various locations, the beach, Palomar's home, Paris, Japan, and elsewhere, and it may be that he is to be taken as a symbol rather than as a real character.

The story is told with irony and I think the reader is meant to contrast the virtues of thought, restraint, self-sufficiency, and reserve in Mr Palomar with his alienation from the larger culture and with his aloneness and eccentricities. The stories follow a pattern in which Mr. Palomar's thoughts and experiences go radically off course as he is confronted with the reality of a world independent of his wishes.

As most reviewers have noted, the most memorable portion of this book is a chapter titled "The Naked Bosom" in which Mr. Palomar thinks about and responds to a topless sunbather on the beach.There is good irony here, a wry discussion of the relationship between the sexes, and a good illustration of how human sexuality stands outside of the order of nature, somehow, even to the most detached observer.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the book is much more slowly paced, loses itself in a welter of detail, and, for me, quickly becomes dull.I found that there just isn't enough to fasten upon here to make this book work successfully either as philosophy or novel.

Dream of Saturn
When I first picked this up, I had to admit that I was skeptical.I am a great fan of Calvino but was put off by books description.The shtick of the viewer controlling and describing everything seemed more like a gimmick than a legit novel.Boy, was I wrong.I have never been more interested in viewing Saturn or seeing Starlings in Rome than after reading this.Please, do not get me wrong; I know it is about more than that.The thing is, like Invisible Cities, this book wraps itself around your psyche, hijacks your thoughts and informs your dreams.Calvino went out with a bang.

"We don't know what they mean..."
Here is another great example of how versatile a writer Italo Calvino was. His work always had a philosophical side to it, and in Mr. Palomar that side almost takes over completely.

Mr. Palomar is the main character (in fact, one of the only characters) and the world simply befuddles him to an extent that he needs to find order and meaning in everything. His attempts are often very funny, but how they're all inevitably spoilt is even funnier. Probably the best example of this is the section entitled "The Naked Bosom" - Palomar tries to find a way to both not deny himself the natural pleasure of seeing a topless sunbather and not denying the naked sunbather digity and respect. His attempts cause him to pass by the sunbather so frequently that she gets up in a huff. Good intentions, bad implementation. The book circles around similar themes, but within many different contexts. Palomar looks at waves, rhapsodizes on mating turtles, examines the night sky, examines the patrons of a cheese shop, etc. Mr. Palomar is always in natural and real-life situations, but over-analyzing them to a degree almost of unreality. Though it sometimes reads like a very heady, and bordering on the pretentious, book, it's actually a very funny book about trying to find meaning in life, and the inevitable problems one will likely have in finding meaning all by oneself. It almost reads like a parody of intellectualism; of someone so thirsting for knowledge that they forget their very surroundings and paradoxically neglect themselves and others in the process. The more Palomar examines the world, the less he feels comfortable in it, and the further he seems to drift from people and society. By the end of the book, Palomar is in pretty bad shape in this regard, and the book's final sentence will either stun you or make you laugh very hard. Yes, there is a story (and arguably a plot) it's just told very unconventionally.

Some of the standout sections are "The Naked Bosom" (mentioned earlier, about the sunbather), "Marble and Blood" (about hidden guilt in a butcher's shop), and "Serpents and Skulls" (about interpreting ancient meanings). All of these are at once funny and profound. Through Palomar's search the reader gets a peek at some of the great questions and some controversial issues. How one deals with these questions and issues is something every reflective, for those fortunate enough to have time and resources for reflection, human being must wrestle with. In the end the book asks a big question: "How to deal with all of this?" It is doubtful that Mr. Palomar provides a good example, but it is entertaining to follow his steps through the maze of existence's puzzles.

The table of contents of this book are not where one would expect. They have been put to the back of the book as an index, and coded thematically and experientially. The index explains the structure of the book. I can't say I've seen this approach elsewhere, but it makes me wonder if Palomar is responsible for them - is the index part of the parody?

Palomar is experimental, funny, profound, unconventional, and at last entertaining and challenging to read. This pretty much sums up all of Calvino's books. He never settled on one approach or one style for too long. One never knows what they're going to get when one picks up a book by Calvino. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (35)

No man is an island
Most young boys, presented with a plateful of boiled snails for dinner and forced to eat them, might well remove themselves from the dining room--just as Cosimo takes to the trees as a rebellion against the screwball whims of his family. After this memorable opening, however, any pretense of realism ends, because for the rest of his life Cosimo never touches solid ground again.

The comedy of Cosimo's family is narrated by his younger brother, Biagio, who serves as the "grounded" foil to the folly of his parents and siblings. The boys' father is a bore "dominated by conflicting ideas" whose meek personality pales when set against the supremacy of the household's womenfolk. Their mother, the Generalessa, the daughter of the commander of the Holy Roman Empire's troops, has turned her household into a military camp, where even pieces of embroidery resemble maps "showing the disposition of battles in the Wars of Succession." Cosimo's tough-as-nails sister, Battista, doubles as the cook, serving up basted baby porcupines and rats' liver pate and spending "nights wandering the house in search of mice, holding a candelabra, with a musket under her arm."

Although heir to this substantial, if quirkily managed, estate on earth, Cosimo establishes his own kingdom in the trees for the duration of the Age of Enlightenment, and he acquires first a local fame as a judicious protector (guarding against vagabond pirates and adolescent riffraff) and then a continental notoriety as a cerebral wit. A bibliophile even in his skyward perch, Cosimo corresponds with Diderot, to whom he posits a constitution for the ideal state, a Republic of Arborea. (Of course, once all of humanity had taken to the trees, Cosimo would necessarily return to his solitary life on the now-deserted land.) Being not exactly of the world permits him the distance "to see the earth properly." ("Once it was only Nature that produced living phenomena," says a bemused Voltaire. "Now `tis Reason.") Even Napoleon, on his way to Milan to be crowned, pays a visit to this modern-day Simon Stock.

One of Calvino's more popular (and most accessible) novels, the fairy-tale premise of "The Baron in the Trees" has occasionally been criticized for excessive cuteness, its farcical storyline often overpowering both its literary allusions and the seemingly haphazard references to seventeenth-century philosophy. Behind the folly, however, is a Donne-inspired morality tale that argues ad absurdum that there is no escaping the world; even from the air, Cosimo is as much a part of society as the most animated man-about-town on the ground.

one of calvino's best
One of Calvino's more accessible works, too.If you were put off by If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, try this more traditional novel.A great deal of fun.Goes great with coffee.

Up in the trees
Italo Calvino was one of the most underrated maestros of magical realism, where atoms fall in love and empty suits of armor walk and talk.And one of his most polished, reader-friendly stories was "Baron in the Trees," a fable about a nobleman who lives his whole life in a tree. Yes, it sounds weird -- but the result is sweet, uplifting and full of childlike wonder.

A young nobleman, Cosimo, was enraged when his eccentric sister made dinner out of his pet snails. So when his father ordered him to eat, he ran up a tree and swore to stay there forever. And he did, from his adolescence up to old age, becoming famous as the Baron in the Trees. Even at the death of his parents, he remained in the trees nearby, watching and helping -- but not coming down. Even when the Baron dies, he finds a way to ascend even higher...

Without leaving the trees, he manages to hunt animals, educate himself with great philosophers, adopts an abandoned dog, lends bestselling books to a local bandito, battles pirates who are conspiring with his uncle, has an affair with a promiscuous Marchesa, and even lives with a band of tree-dwelling Spanish exiles.

"Baron in the Trees" is a whimsical little story on the surface, until you look deeper at the message of "living in trees." Cosimo removes himself from the ground, and also removes himself from the worries of ordinary people -- social position, power, material goods. He's happy just to have friends, books, and his own private kingdom.

But even if you take it at face value, "Baron in the Trees" is an enchanting little story. Calvino's lush, detailed writing is always full of a child's wonder, and he sounds like he's living his own fantasies as he describes how Cosimo manages to sleep (a sort of fur cocoon), store his possessions and fall in live... while never stepping out of the tree. But Calvino manages to convey the bittersweetness of Cosimo's life: While he loves his odd life, he also knows that it alienates him from the rest of the world and leaves him alone.

Cosimo himself is a relatively distant character, since the whole book is through the eyes of his otherwise-unimportant brother. But he is surrounded by equally quirky characters -- his Jesuit-phobic father, "general" mother, creepy disgraced sister, and an array of book-loving bandits, odd priests, and peasants who get used to the tree-dwelling Baron.

A sweet, quirky fable about a young man who just won't come down to earth, "The Baron in the Trees" is a truly enchanting read.

Fully Wonderful
A beautiful fairy tale of a book. It never devolves into heavy-handed allegory.It's original, without stinking of Cleverness. Don't know what else to say. If you're into John Crowley, Borges, Ray Bradbury, or the Brothers Grimm, then you'll love this book. You'll probably love it anyway. Have fun.

Calvino at his best
The Baron in the Trees is one of the most enchanting novels ever written.When the Baron decides to take up his arboreal existence, one cannot help but believe he is making the right decision.Calvino fleshes out the Baron into one of the most believable characters in literature.This is an amazing feat considering the farcical lifestyle the Baron decides to adopt.Calvino takes the opportunity to create a world at once steeped in history, philosophy and politics while at the same time illustrating the everyday existence and lives of those around him.The cat skin hat, the exiles in the trees, the Napoleonic troops all brought to life with amazing detail.Memory, love and history all combine and swirl throughout the story. While there is nothing exactly magical or out of this world about this book, it is one of the best examples of magical realism I have read.I could not put this book down.Stop reading this review and buy the book. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Why read Italo Calvino's book on the classics? Because it passes his own test for what a classic is, and its brisk prose can blast your concept of the word clean of the dusty associations that cling to it. Calvino gives 14 offbeat definitions of classic, my favorite being "a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off." His sharp essays on Conrad, Dickens, Diderot, Flaubert, Ovid, and others constitute an act of self-criticism too, a novelist's imaginative autobiography. In 1955, when rave-reviewing RobinsonCrusoe, he called Daniel Defoe the "inventor of modern journalism." In 1954, he overcame his disgust with Hemingway's life "of violent tourism," coolly assessed his dry heights and sodden depths, and called himself Papa's apprentice. And the 1984 piece on Borges shows who influenced Calvino most once he'd become a master himself.

From both the American and the Argentinian, Calvino learned to be concise, and his quick sketches of books like the "unqualified masterpiece" Our Mutual Friend provide a contact high--one wants to drop everything and head straight to a library, so infectious is his enthusiasm. "How many young people will be smitten" by Stendhal's recently, brilliantly retranslated Waterloo-era adventure The Charterhouse of Parma, he writes, "recognizing it as the novel they had always wanted to read... the benchmark for all the other novels they will read in later life." Like a great teacher, Italo Calvino distills a writer's essence in a vivid phrase: money, for instance, serves as "the motive force of Balzac's narrative, the true test of feeling in Dickens; but in Mark Twain money is a game of mirrors, causing vertigo over a void." --Tim AppeloBook Description
From the internationally-acclaimed author of some of this century's most breathtakingly original novels comes this posthumous collection of thirty-six literary essays that will make any fortunate reader view the old classics in a dazzling new light.

Learn why Lara, not Zhivago, is the center of Pasternak's masterpiece, Dr. Zhivago, and why Cyrano de Bergerac is the forerunner of modern-day science-fiction writers. Learn how many odysseys The Odyssey contains, and why Hemingway's Nick Adams stories are a pinnacle of twentieth-century literature. From Ovid to Pavese, Xenophon to Dickens, Galileo to Gadda, Calvino covers the classics he has loved most with essays that are fresh, accessible, and wise. Why Read the Classics? firmly establishes Calvino among the rare likes of Nabokov, Borges, and Lawrence--writers whose criticism is as vibrant and unique as their groundbreaking fiction.   ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Exceptional Anthology
An inspirational collection from an excellent essayist. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in literature.

A personal antology
The answer to the question sophisticatedly raised by this little anthology, is given in the essay which opens the collection.The basic reason lies in forming a personal scale of values that help you individualize the real artistic elements in new works. The second one is that reading increases the quality of living in usual and unusual situations, as well. But the quality of school anthologies and their presentations is still an open problem.

Calvino get you inloved withliterature!!
What makes a book a clasic? Borges once said in a conference, thatthe fact that a whole generationlives with the idea of a book makes it a classic, Calvino involve you in that idea.. ... Read more

Amazon.com
One comes away from this collection of intellectually playfulessays...by Italy's foremost modern novelist...inspired to go back and reread the body of his fiction in the light of his reflections on literature. -- Christopher Lehmann-HauptBook Description

Book Description