Three (long) short stories or novellas from a master. In each of these, Calvino’s style shines through. The style is not so much fantasy or magical realism as it is one of detailed realism, almost scientifically examined until it becomes absurd. The Watcher” is told from the third-person-singular point of view, which facilitates approaching the protagonist objectively while still revealing his thoughts. The clearest impressions in the story are those of Amerigo’s mind. Other impressions are less detailed, or vague. Though the voting officials play dramatic roles in the story, their names are not mentioned, and they are drawn in only the harshest of outlines. The major character of Lia is never seen, and her voice is heard only over the telephone, accompanied by undescribed music. All of this serves to intensify the focus on Amerigo’s thoughts and swings of mood. The world of the story is, in fact, presented only as a perception of Amerigo’s. Even the rain at the outset of the story, rather than being presented objectively, independent of Amerigo, is presented as one of his perceptions: “It looked like rain.” Soon afterward is the image of Amerigo “tilting his umbrella to one side and raising his face to the rain.” In the protagonist’s contemplations, many issues are raised: the nature of democracy, progress in history, blessedness (that is, the sensation of universal harmony in which one takes part) versus personal dissatisfaction (which can be a stimulus to action and creativity), religion as the acceptance of human smallness, humanity’s triumph over adversity, and the importance of personal experience over abstraction. The number and variety of these issues demonstrate the fecund restlessness of Amerigo’s mind, and resulting as they do from Amerigo’s observations during his day as poll-watcher, they dramatize the insistence in Italian neorealism of looking at events in the context of the environment. Calvino regarded each of these causes as an enemy of humanity that limited the ability of people and society to remain healthy and whole.

In Cosmicomics Calvino makes it possible for the reader to inhabit a meson, a mollusk, a dinosaur—makes him see for the first time light as it ends the dark universe. Since this is a unique gift, I find all the more alarming the “literariness” of Time and the Hunter. I was particularly put off by the central story “t zero,” which could have been written (and rather better) by Borges. Pilz, Kerstin (2005). Mapping Complexity: Literature and Science in the Works of Italo Calvino. Leicester: Troubador.

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It's not out of the question this collection of stories could be categorised as horror. That's not really a genre I read, and this would be the mildest possible form, but there's an unsettling, disquieting element to each of the stories. There's absolutely nothing supernatural going on, but a slight sense of a grotesque threat. The first, The Watcher, is about a member of a political party watching the election polls at an area densely populated with a different political party. Lots of philosophizing about politics. And, oh yeah, he finds out his gf is pregnant on the phone at lunch. I'm trying to close, but I realize I've forgotten to introduce the recurrent theme of love as an expression of desire for knowledge, for reaching out of the inner self, as the moving factor behind celestial mechanics and behind evolution of living cells ( The tension towards the outside, the elsewhere, the otherwise, which is what is then called a state of desire. . from Mitosis ). The move from asexual to sexual reproduction is seen as a process of alienation, of separating what was once whole and letting the halves of the sphere search for each other through eternity (Plato?) : Void, separation and waiting, that's what we are. from Meiosis .

In a lecture delivered in New York in the spring of 1983, Italo Calvino remarked that "most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it".

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This is what happens when you let a poet loose in a library full of science books: he will turn everything on its head and take you sailing across the galactic plane watching suns coalesce from the primordial dust, he will hold a conversation across light years with neighboring galaxies, he will dance around a multicolored, sparkling crystal gardeen, play marbles with hydrogen atoms along the curvature of space and chase skirts down gravity wells, running on parallel lines that must somehow meet in the future of desire.