11/21/2023 0 Comments Books like invisible cities![]() It's best, I think, to read Invisible Cities like a traveler - slowly, luxuriously, as if you have all the time in the world. Not because Calvino's writing is difficult to penetrate, but simply because he packs so much into each sentence. I find myself pausing every two or three pages to process what I have just read. This is a slim book, only 165 pages, but it's not the kind you devour in one sitting. When I'm reading it (which I do often), I see the world a bit differently, at an angle. It should come with a warning about operating heavy machines while under its influence. There's also something pleasantly disorienting about this book. Beersheba, for instance, a city with a subterranean twin of pure gold, does not know that "its only moments of generous abandon are those when it becomes detached from itself, when it lets go, expands." Or Raissa, a city of sadness that nonetheless "contains a happy city unaware of its existence." The city dwellers are trapped in cycles of despair - a sort of urban samsara - failing to realize that they hold the keys to their particular prison. I'm not sure if Calvino intended this, but I find the book very Buddhist. Shelve Invisible CitiesShelve FiccionesShelve The Tartar SteppeShelve La luna e i falShelve Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other WritingsShelve Il fu Mattia PascalShelve The Aleph. The inhabitants of Calvino's cities are a tortured lot, ensnared in various traps, largely of their own making. Each city represents a thought experiment, or, as Polo tells Khan at one point, "You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders but in the answer it gives to a question of yours."Įric Weiner is a former NPR correspondent and the author of The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. Calvino's cities - like all cities, really - are constructed not of steel and concrete but of ideas. There's Hypatia, a city of beautiful blue lagoons but where "crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides, stones tied around their necks" Laudomia, the city of the unborn, whose inhabitants have constructed a parallel city for those yet to come Octavia, the spider-web city, whose residents live suspended over an abyss, supported by a net they know won't last long and Argia, a city with earth instead of air.Īt some point, you realize that Calvino is not talking about cities at all, not in the way we normally think of the word. These are fantastical, beguiling places, where things are never as they seem. Each short chapter describes a different city, 55 in all. They're sitting in a garden, where the Venetian explorer is regaling the Mongol ruler with tales of the cities he has seen journeying to the far reaches of Khan's vast empire. The only characters are an aging Kublai Khan and a young-ish Marco Polo. Technically, this is a novel, a work of fiction, but one without any storyline. The places Calvino describes, though, don't exist on any map. It was, in fact, the traveler in me that first fell under its spell. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities might be labeled travelogue. How?Įric Weiner's latest book is Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine. ![]() Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Got any questions or requests? Feel free to message the moderators.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Invisible Cities Author Italo Calvino and William Weaver Like in all subreddits we ask of you to please respect the reddit wide rules.Please use spoiler tags as to not reveal important plot points. You can use Markdown to make your links look nicer. If you believe your comment or submission has been removed because it included an Amazon link, please message the mods.īeware: Link shorteners are automatically removed by the spam filter. If you are found to be excessively promoting your book in the comments, you will be banned.īeware: Amazon links could be caught in the spam filter. ![]() This is not the place to advertise your book. Any illegal content will be removed at the moderators' discretion. If you want to include a link in your suggestion we encourage you to link to the author's page or to an amazon alternative.ĭon't link to illegal content. Top level replies must be suggestions or question to clear up the request. Don't attack the requests or any suggestions made, and definitely do not attack or scold individual users (it's sad really, that we actually have to specifically say this.)
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