BOOKS: Baron In The Trees

When I was a boy I always climbed trees. There was a particularly tall one, at least 60 to 70 feet high, that I would climb like an ape and sit at the top for hours surveying the neighborhood. I was fascinated by the ecosystem of the tree__an entire world populated by bugs, birds, small animals and odd flora that ground dwellers knew nothing about. I loved it up there, but eventually I would come down, driven by hunger or an angry parent who thought I was crazy. Several years ago I was caught off guard and surprised when I found a novel by Italo Calvino called, Baron In the Trees. Now here was a book about a boy after my own heart, Cosimo a rich boy of 12, a baron, who annoyed and abused by his insane father, climbs a tree and never comes down. Sounds farcical, like a silly fairy tale. Maybe even a stupid story? But don’t under estimate the great Italian author Italo Calvino. He takes this seemly improbable plot and weaves it into one of the most enchanting novels ever written, a novel full of metaphor, history, philosophy and politics. It’s quite astonishing. Essentially the novel is a metaphor for independence, but it works on many other different levels. Cosimo is like a like an arboreal Robinson Crusoe. The amazing thing is that Cosimo is able to continue a normal life and do things only ground dwellers would do while traveling from tree to tree over a great distance. He continues his education, hunts with a dachshund, is able to get food and make clothing, acquires girlfriends, becomes a scientist and writer, helps a brigand with his reading, and even has an adventure on a pirate ship without stepping on board. But this is the surface plot of this novel, as fascinating as it is, there is more here. The story is a parable about living free without worrying about the constraints of society, of doing what it is you really want to do in life and not caring what others think. How many of us do that? It’s a tale about a boy becoming a man on his own terms. Is it a call to irresponsibility? I don’t think so. It’s just a beautiful fairy tale of a book. Read it.