bobbyburns
New Member
so, you didn't like the technique in if on a winter's night ...?
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Italo Calvino
- Thread starter Martin
- Start date
I just finished re-reading If on a winter's night a traveler and it is an excellent book. It is slightly gimmicky, but the gimmick works (by the end of the book the gimmick sort of reveals itself). I wouldn't call it a postmodern novel. It more pokes fun at postmodernism (via the character of Lotaria for one). It's more about reading, being a reader, and obsession. It's amazingly original, funny, and poetic.
Other good Calvino has already been mentioned, but why not again? The Baron in the Trees, The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount, Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and Mr. Palomar will provide enough to chew on for a while. I wouldn't recommend starting with Invisible Cities. It's really unique and somewhat impenetrable on a first reading. Save that one for later. One thing you'll find about Calvino is his style tends to differ greatly from book to book. He's a very eclectic writer. Consequently, if you didn't like one book of his, chances are you'll like the next one.
Calvino's also know as a "fabulist." He was one of the first to mix fantasy, the fabulous, and straightforward fiction together to great effect. Sometimes he's surreal. Some of his books would be nearly impossible to translate to film.
Other good Calvino has already been mentioned, but why not again? The Baron in the Trees, The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount, Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and Mr. Palomar will provide enough to chew on for a while. I wouldn't recommend starting with Invisible Cities. It's really unique and somewhat impenetrable on a first reading. Save that one for later. One thing you'll find about Calvino is his style tends to differ greatly from book to book. He's a very eclectic writer. Consequently, if you didn't like one book of his, chances are you'll like the next one.
Calvino's also know as a "fabulist." He was one of the first to mix fantasy, the fabulous, and straightforward fiction together to great effect. Sometimes he's surreal. Some of his books would be nearly impossible to translate to film.
hatter
New Member
post modernism
If I remember my 1st year English tutes correctly you were right Martin, the sentence is post modern. In fact, I am 99% sure that it was a reference from my tutor to If on a winters night during a post modernist section of the course that prompted me to read that book. (I really enjoyed it by the way, though a friend of mine just found it frustrating.)
My theory is that nobody really understands what postmodern means, including the postmodernists. The closest I came to a definition is that postmodernist writing is that which challenges or subverts existing power structures, status quo, or hegemonies. So, when the author draws your attention to the fact that you are reading, and that it is them speaking directly to you, they're subverting the normal way you read a book and pointing out the constructs a novel relies on.
Oh dear... that's all starting to sound rather technical and pompous! I think this is how all conversations about post modernism end up too. No wonder nobody in my tutes liked it. Maybe I should just say that post modernist writers play around with accepted 'rules' in order to challenge the way we see things? Anyone else want to have a go?
Martin said:And after checking your two links, Wabbit, I sincerely believe I was dead wrong. Apologies for that.
Still a nice opening sentence, though!
Cheers, Martin
If I remember my 1st year English tutes correctly you were right Martin, the sentence is post modern. In fact, I am 99% sure that it was a reference from my tutor to If on a winters night during a post modernist section of the course that prompted me to read that book. (I really enjoyed it by the way, though a friend of mine just found it frustrating.)
My theory is that nobody really understands what postmodern means, including the postmodernists. The closest I came to a definition is that postmodernist writing is that which challenges or subverts existing power structures, status quo, or hegemonies. So, when the author draws your attention to the fact that you are reading, and that it is them speaking directly to you, they're subverting the normal way you read a book and pointing out the constructs a novel relies on.
Oh dear... that's all starting to sound rather technical and pompous! I think this is how all conversations about post modernism end up too. No wonder nobody in my tutes liked it. Maybe I should just say that post modernist writers play around with accepted 'rules' in order to challenge the way we see things? Anyone else want to have a go?
Castle of Crossed Destinies was great. I love Calvino's inventiveness. I read Path to the Spider's Web, an early novel, which is not at all like the Castle, but still well-written and quite descriptive. I also read about a couple of years ago whilst in France, Adam, One Afternoon. Can't remember much about it really though, which either suggests the French holiday was great or the novel was disappointing. Wish I could remember.
Nice to see this earlier author getting a few mentions. Along with M John Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Cihna Mieville and I hear Jeff Vandermeer, he's up there with the best speculative fiction has to offer.
I'd recommend most things by this author but Invisible Cities is my fav, a tour de force of the imagination.
I'd recommend most things by this author but Invisible Cities is my fav, a tour de force of the imagination.
beer good
Well-Known Member
The Castle of Crossed Destinies is a WEIRD book. The weirdest - and, sadly, least enjoyable - Calvino book I've read so far, which is saying something.
The whole thing is built around tarot cards. A group of travellers in a deep forest (or, more precisely, two separate groups of travellers in two separate forests, or at least I think so) settle down around a table, and since they're mute, they try to tell their stories by showing the others tarot cards in specific sequences - call it a deckamerone of cards. It's a semiotic novel like Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana to the 3rd degree; every story told, while on some level an obvious play on classic antique and medieval epics, is filtered through a triple blind - the storyteller is limited by what the cards actually show, the narrator of the novel is limited by his interpretation of what the cards mean, and the reader of the novel is limited by his/her knowledge of the myths, cards, and literary nods involved.
As an allegory on storytelling, it's a remarkable feat, the way symbols and archetypes can show up in different ways and have a universal meaning even though they take on completely different roles depending on the context. And Calvino is a brilliant stylist. But in the end, it feels more like he's experimenting and showing off because he can, because he wants to make a point; the stories themselves become repetitive and rarely grab me. I'll want to reread this, in fact I think I want to put it on a shelf in my bathroom and read a story every now and then (most are just 3-4 pages). But for now, it's 3/5.
(Mods - I didn't find this thread when I first posted this review in a thread of its own. Sorry.)
The whole thing is built around tarot cards. A group of travellers in a deep forest (or, more precisely, two separate groups of travellers in two separate forests, or at least I think so) settle down around a table, and since they're mute, they try to tell their stories by showing the others tarot cards in specific sequences - call it a deckamerone of cards. It's a semiotic novel like Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana to the 3rd degree; every story told, while on some level an obvious play on classic antique and medieval epics, is filtered through a triple blind - the storyteller is limited by what the cards actually show, the narrator of the novel is limited by his interpretation of what the cards mean, and the reader of the novel is limited by his/her knowledge of the myths, cards, and literary nods involved.
As an allegory on storytelling, it's a remarkable feat, the way symbols and archetypes can show up in different ways and have a universal meaning even though they take on completely different roles depending on the context. And Calvino is a brilliant stylist. But in the end, it feels more like he's experimenting and showing off because he can, because he wants to make a point; the stories themselves become repetitive and rarely grab me. I'll want to reread this, in fact I think I want to put it on a shelf in my bathroom and read a story every now and then (most are just 3-4 pages). But for now, it's 3/5.
(Mods - I didn't find this thread when I first posted this review in a thread of its own. Sorry.)
beer good
Well-Known Member
Cosmicomics. Now that's good Calvino. Funny, detailed, multi-layered, beautifully written and ever so clever without losing track of the story it tells.
On one level, this is a story about a... let's call him a man, because he's definitely male even if he isn't really human, an eternal being named Qfwfq. It's his life, from childhood to maturity. Only his life takes place over the entire age of the universe, from Big Bang to the 1960s on Earth. Each story builds on some scientific factoid, and then creates a very human-although-not-human story from it with Qfwfq as the narrator. Sometimes he's a dinosaur, sometimes he's a bodiless cosmic being watching as the universe creates itself... or if HE creates it?
Because on another level, this is a story about what IS. And HOW it is. How we create the world by seeing it, experiencing it, how others create images of us and how others' images of us help us create ourselves. How telling stories can bring things into being. We all create our own universe, we all evolve, and the universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all of the directions it can whiz.
5/5.
On one level, this is a story about a... let's call him a man, because he's definitely male even if he isn't really human, an eternal being named Qfwfq. It's his life, from childhood to maturity. Only his life takes place over the entire age of the universe, from Big Bang to the 1960s on Earth. Each story builds on some scientific factoid, and then creates a very human-although-not-human story from it with Qfwfq as the narrator. Sometimes he's a dinosaur, sometimes he's a bodiless cosmic being watching as the universe creates itself... or if HE creates it?
Because on another level, this is a story about what IS. And HOW it is. How we create the world by seeing it, experiencing it, how others create images of us and how others' images of us help us create ourselves. How telling stories can bring things into being. We all create our own universe, we all evolve, and the universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all of the directions it can whiz.
5/5.
beer good
Well-Known Member
I just finished The Cloven Viscount (Il visconte dimezzato, 1952), the first part of Calvino's Our Ancestors trilogy (followed by The Baron In The Trees and The Non-Existant Knight). A short fairy-tale-like story about a nobleman who comes back from the war with the Turks horribly disfigured; his entire left-hand side has been shot to pieces (or has it?) and the one-eyed, one-legged, one-armed, half-gutted, half-brained (but not half-witted) nobleman seems to have gone through a personality change; it soon turns out that he's, well, evil. He treats his subjects horribly, and he's also become obsessed with cutting things in half.
Of course, after a while it turns out his left-hand-side wasn't obliterated at all, but only took longer to get back from the war since it had to stop and help people every step of the way. Yes, his other side is so completely good it's sickening, and even though his subjects are happy at first to have a counter-agent to the right-hand viscount, it soon turns out that the left-hand viscount is barely any use at all, since he absolutely refuses to do anything about the world he lives in or even judge his evil half.
The Cloven Viscount is fun, a light read, playing around with the ideas of good and evil but ultimately not really saying much that hasn't been said in just about every fairytale ever written. I did find some details interesting - for instance, that the first sign that the first half-viscount is evil comes in his completely unforgiving view of justice and his need to separate everything into good and evil halves.
It's a likable enough story, it doesn't take itself too seriously and you'll breeze through it in two hours, but it's by far the most lightweight Calvino I've read.
Of course, after a while it turns out his left-hand-side wasn't obliterated at all, but only took longer to get back from the war since it had to stop and help people every step of the way. Yes, his other side is so completely good it's sickening, and even though his subjects are happy at first to have a counter-agent to the right-hand viscount, it soon turns out that the left-hand viscount is barely any use at all, since he absolutely refuses to do anything about the world he lives in or even judge his evil half.
The Cloven Viscount is fun, a light read, playing around with the ideas of good and evil but ultimately not really saying much that hasn't been said in just about every fairytale ever written. I did find some details interesting - for instance, that the first sign that the first half-viscount is evil comes in his completely unforgiving view of justice and his need to separate everything into good and evil halves.
It's a likable enough story, it doesn't take itself too seriously and you'll breeze through it in two hours, but it's by far the most lightweight Calvino I've read.
Snork Maiden
New Member
I've had If on a Winter's Night a Traveller sitting on my bookshelf for a few years and never seem to get around to reading it, although it intrigues me!
Andy.McKinney
New Member
I have Into The War which contains 3 short stories which are semi-autobiographical. I am really enjoying it.