"Invisible Cities" has no plot, no beginning, no end, no middle and no character development. It is a fictional account of a surrealistic conversation between Marco Polo and the emperor Kublai Khan. Khan is bored and all other story tellers won't due except one Marco Polo. The thing is Marco talks as if he has been sniffing glue. He talks of nothing but strange magical invisible cities. Places seen in dreams. Is there a meaning here? Yes. Sit back and read this book slowly and carefully__ you are in the hands of a master here, Italo Calvino, Italian fantasist extraordinaire and contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Calvino's style is hard to classify except to say he has extraordinary writing ability, especially in the Italian, but don't worry many serviceable English translations exist. If a literary pigeonhole must be put on Calvino's work it can be called magical realism, but there is more to it than that__ each of his marvelous stories is a fable and fables are meant to teach a lesson and as such, "Invisible Cities" teaches a lesson. Calvino's lessons are often hard to figure, but the riddle is usually worth the solving. It may take you several days to read "Invisible Cities." It will make you stop, think and then ponder some more. What is this guy trying to say? The motive that drives most readers on is that Calvino's writing is quite beautiful, even in English translation. It's writing that pulls the reader in and pushes him forward as he tries to figure out what lesson Calvino is trying to teach. Fifty-five different invisible cities are described, each in a short fable, but alas at the end they are all the same city. Calvino means to say that cities are not their physical structure, the set up of streets or the height of the buildings, instead cities are literally the inhabitants that move within them__a life force, a combination of personalities that literally hums between the cracks. If you think about it a minute, cities are like that, each one has a different feel beyond and above mere physical place. Calvino is one of the great discoveries a reader can make. Give yourself a treat.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
BOOKS: Invisible Cities
"Invisible Cities" has no plot, no beginning, no end, no middle and no character development. It is a fictional account of a surrealistic conversation between Marco Polo and the emperor Kublai Khan. Khan is bored and all other story tellers won't due except one Marco Polo. The thing is Marco talks as if he has been sniffing glue. He talks of nothing but strange magical invisible cities. Places seen in dreams. Is there a meaning here? Yes. Sit back and read this book slowly and carefully__ you are in the hands of a master here, Italo Calvino, Italian fantasist extraordinaire and contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Calvino's style is hard to classify except to say he has extraordinary writing ability, especially in the Italian, but don't worry many serviceable English translations exist. If a literary pigeonhole must be put on Calvino's work it can be called magical realism, but there is more to it than that__ each of his marvelous stories is a fable and fables are meant to teach a lesson and as such, "Invisible Cities" teaches a lesson. Calvino's lessons are often hard to figure, but the riddle is usually worth the solving. It may take you several days to read "Invisible Cities." It will make you stop, think and then ponder some more. What is this guy trying to say? The motive that drives most readers on is that Calvino's writing is quite beautiful, even in English translation. It's writing that pulls the reader in and pushes him forward as he tries to figure out what lesson Calvino is trying to teach. Fifty-five different invisible cities are described, each in a short fable, but alas at the end they are all the same city. Calvino means to say that cities are not their physical structure, the set up of streets or the height of the buildings, instead cities are literally the inhabitants that move within them__a life force, a combination of personalities that literally hums between the cracks. If you think about it a minute, cities are like that, each one has a different feel beyond and above mere physical place. Calvino is one of the great discoveries a reader can make. Give yourself a treat.
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