{"id":30495,"date":"2024-10-17T13:24:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T17:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30495"},"modified":"2024-10-17T13:24:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T17:24:17","slug":"italo-calvino-invisible-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2024\/10\/17\/italo-calvino-invisible-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

Invisible Cities<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Italo Calvino (Le citt\u00e0 invisibili<\/em>, 1972)<\/span>
\ntranslated from the Italian by William Weaver (1974)<\/span>
\nMariner Books Classics (1978)<\/span>
\n165 pp<\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"\"T<\/span>he only other novel by Italo Calvino that I’ve read is If on a winter’s night a traveler…<\/em><\/a>, a book that I enjoyed on some level but that I also failed to connect to in the way I’d hoped. Recently one of my book clubs picked\u00a0Invisible Cities<\/em>, and to cut to the chase: I absolutely loved it.<\/p>\n

The book is setup as a conversation between the explorer Marco Polo and the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan. Kublai has asked Polo to describe some of the cities Polo has visited on his travels. And so we get absolutely beautiful and thought-provoking descriptions of 55 fictional cities, interspersed with short interruptions in which Kublai and Polo interrogate the power of language to evoke so much, not just physical descriptions and sensations but also metaphysical subjects like memory and death.<\/p>\n

\n

The descriptions of cities Marco Polo visited had this virtue: you could wander through them in thought, become lost, stop and enjoy the cool air, or run off.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

William Weaver’s translation is absolutely up to the task of doing the same. I myself felt transported and often found myself deeply reflective as I read the passages.<\/p>\n

There are many other ways to discuss this book — its conflicts, its structure, its names — and I’m really glad that I found it. Like a great volume of poetry, I anticipate I will revisit it often in part and in whole.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800],"tags":[882,1003],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-1970s","tag-1003"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Invisible-Cities-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7VR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30495"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30506,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30495\/revisions\/30506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30495"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}