Specify Books During Mr Palomar
| Original Title: | Palomar |
| ISBN: | 0099430878 (ISBN13: 9780099430872) |
| Edition Language: | English |
Italo Calvino
Paperback | Pages: 128 pages Rating: 3.9 | 5439 Users | 378 Reviews
Narrative In Pursuance Of Books Mr Palomar
Mr Palomar is a delightful eccentric whose chief activity is looking at things. He is simply seeking knowledge; 'it is only after you have come to know the surface of things that you can venture to seek what is underneath'. Whether contemplating a fine cheese, a hungry gecko, a woman sunbathing topless or a flight of migrant starlings, Mr Palomar's observations render the world afresh.
Details About Books Mr Palomar
| Title | : | Mr Palomar |
| Author | : | Italo Calvino |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 128 pages |
| Published | : | July 11th 1994 by Vintage Classics (first published November 1983) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. European Literature. Italian Literature. Literature. Short Stories. Cultural. Italy |
Rating About Books Mr Palomar
Ratings: 3.9 From 5439 Users | 378 ReviewsRate About Books Mr Palomar
If this were a novel (it isn't), it would have the rare distinction of being entirely characterless. (Which is not to say it is without character. Character it has. In fact, it's a real charmer.) Many books lack plot (as this one does) but few find themselves without a character to follow around. Calvino, however, despite having named his book after a person (the "main character"), has made a world that is populated by things like giraffes and tortoises and waves and meat and cheese and evenA bit nearsighted, absent minded, introverted, he does not seem to belong temperamentally to that human type generally called an observer. And yet it has always happened that certain things a stone wall, a seashell, a leaf, a teapot present themselves to him as if asking him for a minute and prolonged attention: he starts observing them almost unawares and his gaze begins to run over all the details, and is then unable to detach itself. I find it almost impossible to pick a favorite among the
Though he believes that "the world can very well do without him," the res cogitans that inhabits this text (not much of a narrative and accordingly not properly a narrator) investigates the world available to him ("the surface of things is inexhaustible" or so), loathing to waste those surfaces that the world sets before him and attempting to reduce complexity to simplicity, as he asserts.Plenty of amusing observations and philosophical interest. Perhaps however not entirely successful.
I'm not one of your starry-eyed prose-droolers who appreciates beautiful writing on its own terms. I need formal innovation or structural complexity or dazzling dialogue or knee-snapping humour to keep me amused amid the lexical contortionism. This makes Calvino an infuriating bedfellow: his Oulipo-era prose is constructed with tight mathematical rigidity, yet what comes through in this work is the shiny artifice of his prose, the sparkly poetics of the Cosmicomics. Not good. Well . . . I don't
If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant, Palomar thinks, and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen. He decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies
Calvino is my favourite writer and this was one of his last books. It's not an easy read. There is no 'story' as such. Rather it is a series of meditations that are as lyrical as they are rigorous and profound. Like the famous and brilliant Invisible Cities it is a book that requires more than one reading. Calvino is the master of paradox and contradiction and his ideas are genuinely original.
The thought of a time outside our experience is intolerable. Had I met someone like Mr. Palomar before reading this book, Id have easily passed him off as just another middle aged man on the verge of senility with nothing better to do with his time or at the most a mad wannabe scientist who realized about his true calling when it was too late with no one interested about his observations or findings. But trust Mr. Calvino when it comes to make seemingly weak characters strong and one of the
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