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Review
'The author's command of detail and his fine, inventive imagination, his ability to turn ideas upside down and inside out, his awareness of the comic capacity of everyday life, are always ready to surprise and delight.' Literary Review
Literary Review
‘The author’s ... ability to turn ideas upside down and inside out ... always ready to surprise and delight’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This collection of fictions from across Calvino's career makes an stunning testament to his genius. calvino's 'stories' (for want of a better word, because he plays with many forms) range wildly, from the fabular to the faux-political tract to the dazzlingly metaphorical to the frankly recollected. they all convince. their brevity means even the shortest attention span can enjoy. in fact, 'glaciation', perhaps my favourite text in the (translated) english language, is also three pages long.
in a word: revlationary.
in a word: revlationary.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
6 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
product of a brilliant mind
1 July 1999
Format:Paperback
this engaging collection of stories shows calvino's versatility.playfully absurd fables, mind-bending exercises in combinatorics, "interviews" with somewhat deranged historical figures, glaciation interrupting a romantic encounter, an encylopedia of all human knowledge... these ideas and more are all expressed with humor, economy and wonderful style.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Great book, mediocre kindle iPad edition
7 July 2010
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a wonderful collection of little gems.
Unfortunately the Kindle to iPad edition is filled with "typos"--- I suppose representing failure of the OCR used to create the file?
Unfortunately the Kindle to iPad edition is filled with "typos"--- I suppose representing failure of the OCR used to create the file?
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Not a great intro to Calvino
18 May 2010
Format:Paperback
Although this collection of short stories had some really nice moments, I was ultimately unimpressed. I had heard great things about Italo Calvino, how he's an Italian version of Borges, and I can certainly see the similarities to the great Argentine author, but Calvino does not benefit from the comparison.
The collection is organized chronologically, as far as I can tell, and it begins with promise. There are a few pedestrian extended jokes and adolescent musings on love, but there are some fascinating fantasy/fables (in one story, a military regiment takes over a library to read every book and determine which ones should be censored, but their involuntary education changes their lives, and in another, a military parade takes a wrong turn and sheds pieces of itself as it winds through a town) and allegories that are impressive when I know the context (I didn't comprehend Becalmed in the Antilles at all until I read the note at the end that reminded me that it was written in, essentially, a Cold War period). No story is "leave you gasping for breath" good, but they're the kind of thing you might read in a high school or college literary magazine from an exceptionally talented student.
As he aged, though, Calvino didn't really live up to the promise of his early stories, as far as I can tell in this collection. His later work is twisted around intellectually complicated but unengaging musings on the romantic journey of water on its way to a shower head or the path a long-distance call takes or a series of "interviews" that made me feel like I was trapped in college in an intro-level philosophy class again. There is a retelling of the Eurydice myth that hints at spectacular imagery but creates such a distance with its inhuman tone that I couldn't even finish it.
I may just not get Calvino. Maybe I need to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Everyman's Library (Cloth)), his best-known work (in the States), and re-evaluate. But if the rest of his work is fairly characterized by this collection, then I don't understand his appeal.
The collection is organized chronologically, as far as I can tell, and it begins with promise. There are a few pedestrian extended jokes and adolescent musings on love, but there are some fascinating fantasy/fables (in one story, a military regiment takes over a library to read every book and determine which ones should be censored, but their involuntary education changes their lives, and in another, a military parade takes a wrong turn and sheds pieces of itself as it winds through a town) and allegories that are impressive when I know the context (I didn't comprehend Becalmed in the Antilles at all until I read the note at the end that reminded me that it was written in, essentially, a Cold War period). No story is "leave you gasping for breath" good, but they're the kind of thing you might read in a high school or college literary magazine from an exceptionally talented student.
As he aged, though, Calvino didn't really live up to the promise of his early stories, as far as I can tell in this collection. His later work is twisted around intellectually complicated but unengaging musings on the romantic journey of water on its way to a shower head or the path a long-distance call takes or a series of "interviews" that made me feel like I was trapped in college in an intro-level philosophy class again. There is a retelling of the Eurydice myth that hints at spectacular imagery but creates such a distance with its inhuman tone that I couldn't even finish it.
I may just not get Calvino. Maybe I need to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Everyman's Library (Cloth)), his best-known work (in the States), and re-evaluate. But if the rest of his work is fairly characterized by this collection, then I don't understand his appeal.
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