![invisible cities by italo calvino invisible cities by italo calvino](http://img.picturequotes.com/2/691/690455/invisible-cities-italo-calvino-quote-3-picture-quote-1.jpg)
I made it through 5 or so of these false starts, and then realized I wasn’t enjoying the book at all. I always find the first part of a book the most laborious as you don’t really know what’s going on and you’re trying to find your footing… so imagine experiencing that repeatedly in one book! Just as I got interested in the new fiction that was being relayed, the chapter would end, never to be followed up on ever again. This narrative alternates with the first chapters of all the other books you encounter in your journey, which is what I did not like. You then find out that maybe you weren’t reading that book, but another one, and get lead on a wild goose chase looking for a complete version of the initial book you were reading. Throughout the book “you” are searching for the book “If On A Winter’s Night…” which you started reading only to find that there has been a printing error and you only have the first chapter. I suppose I might enjoy a more conventional narrative, but If On A Winter’s Night… was very disjointed and I found it hard to read fluidly. I have tried to read If On A Winter’s Night… many times now, and I have decided that even if Calvino is a genius, he isn’t for me. If you have reviewed Invisible Cities on your site, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here. I am determined to revisit it when I have more patience to struggle through it.Īre other books by Italo Calvino this odd? I’ve heard a lot of blog talk about If on a winter’s night a traveler, but if that’s also odd, I’m probably not interested any longer. It was beautifully written and odd at the same time. I appreciate those reasons, but I didn’t get that out of the strange book.
#INVISIBLE CITIES BY ITALO CALVINO HOW TO#
Suffice it to say, though, that Bloom believes Invisible Cities to be a masterpiece to be read and reread:Ĭalvino’s advice tells us again how to read and why: be vigilant, apprehend and recognize the possibility of the good, help it to endure, give it space in your life. (Calvino was the final short story author for my HTR&W project.) I will have more thoughts on this in my upcoming HTR&W short story retrospective. I will cease to try to make sense of Bloom, and I return once again to my own question: Why do I trust Bloom’s list of books to read? I don’t comprehend the depth of some of these works, and I believe I must be reading them at the wrong time in my life because I am not connecting with them at all. HTR&Wīloom’s commentary on Invisible Cities makes no sense to me after reading the book. But I sense a deep purpose and philosophical meaning behind it all.
![invisible cities by italo calvino invisible cities by italo calvino](https://www.biographbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Illustration-of-Italo-Calvinos-Invisible-Cities-Social-1-scaled.jpg)
If it is the ear that commands the story, my ears failed me. Yet, my ear strained to get the meanings out of this book. To which Kublai Khan responds, “I hear, from your voice, the invisible reasons which make cities live, through which perhaps, once dead, they will come to life again” (page 135-136).Ĭalvino, then, in describing (possibly) one city in so many different ways, brings that city to life in many different ways. Toward the end, Marco Polo says, “It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear” (page 135). The conversations seemed to have interesting discussion that gave light to the brief sketches about cities. I enjoyed the conversations between the two people more than I enjoyed the stories. Was he really describing just one city? Is he describing cities at all? And by the end, we find that Marco Polo’s many cities seem to merge together. We find in these conversations that Marco Polo is the one telling the aging Kublai Khan about these outrageous cities. These sketches are framed by conversations between Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler in China, and Kublai Khan, the ruler of China. Some are cities with the ground in the sky, some are cities of strange people or religions. These stories are about strange cities around the world. Invisible Cities is a collection of very short stories between one and three pages long. All that said, I am struggling to say something coherent about the book. Calvino was trying to do something creatively strange, and I think I missed it, but the strangeness was a bit rewarding in the end. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino was a book that confused me from beginning to end, and yet I am glad I read it.