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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
Italo Calvino never ceases to amaze me with an out-of-nowhere way of storytelling. In "Invisible Cities," There is no such thing as a plot. Marco Polo told narratives and Kublai Khan heard and sometimes interrupted him. Marco Polo described several cities to Kublai Khan before finally admitting, "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice." As he travels across the continent, he found the new interpretation of his dear hometown. A new city that he would reach makes a new understanding of Venice. Venice where the streets and canals entangled firmly. Venice where the daily life of the living is dictated by the dead. Venice where the construction never ends so the destruction doesn't come. When provoked by Khan about the pointless journey that he had done for his life, he argued that in his expedition he found the past that he didn't know he had:
“ By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”
“ By now, from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded; he cannot stop; he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.”
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Didn't know what to expect from this. All a bunch of small vignettes of fictional cities told through Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. Surreal, anachronistic, and lyrical. Very well thought out and written. 4.5
Kublai Khan and Marco Polo.
“There is the city in the shape of Amsterdam, a semicircle facing north, with concentric canals — the princes’, the emperor’s, the nobles’; there is the city in the shape of York, set among the high moors, walled, bristling with towers; there is the city in the shape of New Amsterdam known also as New York, crammed with towers of glass and steel on an oblong island between two rivers, with streets like deep canals, all of them straight, except Broadway.”
“There is the city in the shape of Amsterdam, a semicircle facing north, with concentric canals — the princes’, the emperor’s, the nobles’; there is the city in the shape of York, set among the high moors, walled, bristling with towers; there is the city in the shape of New Amsterdam known also as New York, crammed with towers of glass and steel on an oblong island between two rivers, with streets like deep canals, all of them straight, except Broadway.”
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
medium-paced
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
challenging
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
It doesn’t take long reading Invisible Cities to understand why this text has been translated into so many different languages. Its meditations, largely focused on perception, are utterly fascinating to read.
Calvino’s framing device of Marco Polo telling stories to Kublai Khan is a very fun structure, and all of the interstitials of the pair are compelling, but always made even more so but the meat of the text—Calvino’s multitude of short essays.
Frequent re-reading of lines and passages abound as part of this book’s experience. Calvino is often working towards large concepts at a very brisk pace and little grounding, making passages occasionally difficult, but ultimately rewarding.
At this point Kublai Khan expects Marco to speak of Irene as it is seen from within. But Marco cannot do this: he has not succeeded in discovering which is the city that those of the plateau call Irene. For that matter, it is of slight importance: if you saw it, standing in its midst, it would be a different city; Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes.
For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.
Calvino’s framing device of Marco Polo telling stories to Kublai Khan is a very fun structure, and all of the interstitials of the pair are compelling, but always made even more so but the meat of the text—Calvino’s multitude of short essays.
Frequent re-reading of lines and passages abound as part of this book’s experience. Calvino is often working towards large concepts at a very brisk pace and little grounding, making passages occasionally difficult, but ultimately rewarding.
At this point Kublai Khan expects Marco to speak of Irene as it is seen from within. But Marco cannot do this: he has not succeeded in discovering which is the city that those of the plateau call Irene. For that matter, it is of slight importance: if you saw it, standing in its midst, it would be a different city; Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes.
For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Invisible Cities is amazing for many reasons, and one of them, I think, is that it brings cities alive without turning them into people. It reveals the changing, living nature of cities as “beings” with pulse, with breath, but they are not humans. This is rare. Rarely can authors bring something to life without humanizing them, and this is an issue because humans are not the only things capable of becoming! Calvino’s cities are not alive because they are like people; they are alive because they are cities. That city–which we previously thought stagnant and indifferent to the complexities, the ups and downs of our lives–is revealed as, in fact, a process as well; the city forms and breaks connections, changing, escaping the bounds of identity and overflowing the mold that is the very human-like name it is given. How Deleuzian! One gets the feeling of solving a little puzzle with each city to discover the logic that ties it together, but there is always a kind of flaw, a contradiction in this logic, that gives way to the city’s unraveling but also its re-raveling.