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billhakim 's review for:
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
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.”