These stories follow the private thoughts, the stream of consciousness (though much structured than usual streams) of people, the protagonists. A day in their life. An adventure. Or a phase in their life. The adventure of a soldier, a reader, of a poet or a traveller. Mostly men. A few females too, like the adventure of the bather who realizes she has lost her swim suit in the water. And then the adventure of the reader. Private sensations, private thoughts so articulately laid out that you slip them on like a glove.
Which then draws you to the writer. How well can he create the sensations that you get in the story and the characters and are one with them without thinking that you are reading the written word. In that sense different from Balzac, my last read. Balzac’s was the writing which recreated the world he writes about. Calvino’s is about the person – you can almost feel the same things the characters feel, you get to be one with his characters.
One of the stories, the adventure of the photographer is apt for the modern times of Instagram. What he says here is worth remarking on since he says this in the 1950s.
“You only have to start saying of something: ‘Ah how beautiful! We must photograph it!' and you are already close to the view of the person who things that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore in order really to live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second, to madness.”This is before the same character takes on to photography himself. And over the course of the story, enamored by photography, his efforts are directed towards wanting to create a portrait out of space and time. Like any artist, trying to create something that can breach the boundaries of the finite, and dissolve into and exist in that other dimension of thought, the dimension outside of time and space.
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Each story is a world in itself. Requires me to pause once I close the page on the story and just ruminate. Dwelling on the space it creates, not letting go. These stories deal in emotions, sensations. Beautiful stories, and although translated, the magic works. There are a couple of long short stories too. One of them, Smog – the story is alright, not as hitting as the shorter stories – but I get it, given the lingering smoke that has pervaded everything in Sydney for the last few weeks, now months. And in parts, little parts, Smog also reminds me of the opening setup of Pessoa’s Book of disquiet.
One more long short story to go before I mark this one as read.
Makes me wish – if I could make a cave in time, or a kind of loop in time, where I can just read and read, and then once done, come out and still be at the same time where I left off, or if not the same time, may be five mins later. I wish, I wish! But it doesn’t work that way.
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Later (Feb 19): Finished reading Calvino's book, and I finally get my books-read in the year count to two. The last story in the book was about real estate and changing nature of cities, and people - a long short story. I think I liked the shorter stories in the book better. Hoping to read more from Calvino soon.