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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
This book is really dense with insight about what it is to be a traveler, to be far from home, to visit a ton of places. It's worth a couple of reads at least.
This could be a 5 star book but I'd have to comprehend more of it to appreciate it fully. I also listened to it as an audiobook, an unsuitable format for something where each new sentence is unexpected, and you're fighting recursion or inversion, wondering what is reality as the characters are trying to figure out whether or not they are real. Reading it in print next, hoping that holding it will help me to grasp it.
leggero, ambiguo, filosofico, surreale, inebriante
a love letter to cities and the weird little pockets of life we find in them
What a fantastic collection of stories! Imagined as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, Calvino describes city upon city that are both delightful and horrifying, realistic and unimaginable. Some cities are reminiscent of our own, others are nearly incomprehensible, but there is something in each city that will draw you in.
I think this was a bad time for me to read this book... I had a hard time focusing on it. Or maybe that's what Calvino intended?
I haven't yet decided on a final rating for "Invisible Cities" but in the meantime, it was a ★★★☆☆ read for me.
I finished it within a day for a book club & once again, just like in the case of one of my recent reads, Jenny Odell's "How To Do Nothing", I was tricked into thinking that I'd be able to read it really quickly due to its length (just about 170 pages). What came out as a conclusion of our group discussion, is that you need to give this book the space & the time to develop within your mind (the majority of us actually having rushed through it instead). I also had my opinion once again confirmed that books read on screens (which is the way I had to do it for this one) simply don't stick as much with you as paper books. I didn't manage to get the printed copy in time but I'm looking forward to re-reading it once I receive it by post (& going back to this review to see whether I would change its rating).
The story consists of 55 descriptions of fictitious "cities" in the framework of Marco Polo describing them to the emperor of China. Each of them is between 1 & max 4 pages long, so it pretty much turns the book into a collection of super short stories. What I really appreciated about it, is the fact that it seems it will depend a LOT from reader to reader of what you will take away from the stories.
There are some that I connected with strongly & others that didn't speak to me at all. One that I really enjoyed was Adelma (each of the cities has an imaginary name), reminding me of how I seem to encounter parallel equivalents of people in different cities.
Or Leonia, which was an artistic description of our throw-away society & how things are exchanged for something new on a daily basis, creating a wall of trash around each city.
What I couldn't stop myself from throughout the entire reading experience, was imaging the stories as paintings. Each "city" is described in such a visual way that to me they gave off a vibe of Dali's surrealist work.
The writing is very philosophical & metaphorical, drawing parallels to modern-day life, emotions, inter-personal relations & so much more. It feels very airy & dreamy, the writer manages to establish a certain ethereal flow & lightness to the words. It mostly follows one main theme, which is the duality of things: Life only existing because there is death, or positivity only existing because there is negativity. "Invisible Cities" is not a book I would have normally picked up, so I'm grateful for this book club pick for broadening my horizon once again!
I finished it within a day for a book club & once again, just like in the case of one of my recent reads, Jenny Odell's "How To Do Nothing", I was tricked into thinking that I'd be able to read it really quickly due to its length (just about 170 pages). What came out as a conclusion of our group discussion, is that you need to give this book the space & the time to develop within your mind (the majority of us actually having rushed through it instead). I also had my opinion once again confirmed that books read on screens (which is the way I had to do it for this one) simply don't stick as much with you as paper books. I didn't manage to get the printed copy in time but I'm looking forward to re-reading it once I receive it by post (& going back to this review to see whether I would change its rating).
The story consists of 55 descriptions of fictitious "cities" in the framework of Marco Polo describing them to the emperor of China. Each of them is between 1 & max 4 pages long, so it pretty much turns the book into a collection of super short stories. What I really appreciated about it, is the fact that it seems it will depend a LOT from reader to reader of what you will take away from the stories.
"It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear." (p. 135)
There are some that I connected with strongly & others that didn't speak to me at all. One that I really enjoyed was Adelma (each of the cities has an imaginary name), reminding me of how I seem to encounter parallel equivalents of people in different cities.
"You reach a moment in life when, [...] the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask." (p. 95)
Or Leonia, which was an artistic description of our throw-away society & how things are exchanged for something new on a daily basis, creating a wall of trash around each city.
What I couldn't stop myself from throughout the entire reading experience, was imaging the stories as paintings. Each "city" is described in such a visual way that to me they gave off a vibe of Dali's surrealist work.
"The lake's surface was barely wrinkled; the copper reflection of the ancient palace of Sung was shattered into sparkling glints like floating leaves." (p. 86)
The writing is very philosophical & metaphorical, drawing parallels to modern-day life, emotions, inter-personal relations & so much more. It feels very airy & dreamy, the writer manages to establish a certain ethereal flow & lightness to the words. It mostly follows one main theme, which is the duality of things: Life only existing because there is death, or positivity only existing because there is negativity. "Invisible Cities" is not a book I would have normally picked up, so I'm grateful for this book club pick for broadening my horizon once again!
Let me just say: I’m entirely biased. I love Italo Calvino’s works. This was another beautiful collections of tales about fictional cities visited by a fictional Marco Polo told to a fictional Kublai Khan. This book was very a lá EINSTEIN DREAMS which was a collection of different ways time flows in different worlds. I’d recommend this book to anyone who:
I think if I reread this, I would give it five stars. But one read is not enough to wrap your head around it. It's far more satirical and abstract in a (excuse my throwing this word around) post-modern kind of way than 'if on a winter's night a traveller'. I enjoyed it, but I don't think I appreciate it now like I would after a second reading.
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Based on the above, is it reasonable to say I'm psychic? Or perhaps even four years ago, I knew myself as a reader pretty damn well. Upgraded to a five-star rating after a much-overdue reread. I don't know why I described Invisible Cities as "satirical", because that assessment now seems way off. It's definitely abstract, in a very dreamlike way. So much of it is rooted in the imagery and other sensory descriptions, that it's almost impossible to explain this book to someone else. It's an experience to be had, not necessarily a story to be told.
In any case, I will definitely be rereading this again, hopefully before 2021.
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Based on the above, is it reasonable to say I'm psychic? Or perhaps even four years ago, I knew myself as a reader pretty damn well. Upgraded to a five-star rating after a much-overdue reread. I don't know why I described Invisible Cities as "satirical", because that assessment now seems way off. It's definitely abstract, in a very dreamlike way. So much of it is rooted in the imagery and other sensory descriptions, that it's almost impossible to explain this book to someone else. It's an experience to be had, not necessarily a story to be told.
In any case, I will definitely be rereading this again, hopefully before 2021.
Visionario.
“L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l'inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.”
“L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l'inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.”