MB Book Club Discussion: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
 

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This month's book for the book club is Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Get reading!

Here are some discussion questions from a google search to kick you off



This should be easy to pick up (and worthy of your bookshelf imo), but if you need help with a pdf copy, please send me a PM.

p.s. if you're looking for reading music for this, the Winged Victory for the Sullen's ambient/modern classical soundtrack to a stage performance of the book might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfRNN4pp0_A

I finished it today, I loved it. I'll wait with posting my ideas about it until we're all finished because I think it's more fun that way.

Any plans to read non-fiction in this book club?

I'm down. Books are chosen by people in the club and we go through them on a rotation, so if you want to join and put forward a nonfiction book go ahead. I was thinking of doing Mishima's Sun and Steel for my next pick but that's a bit down the line.

Cool.

I love 'Sun and Steel'. Gotta hand it to the Manics' Richey Edwards for my discovery of that one.

Not sure if I'm gonna join this club or not yet though. I love reading, but I have bookshelves filled with books that are already on my queue.

Oh damn I wasn't actually gonna join but if we can do non-fiction then I might have to join 4 real so I can put up Behold a Pale Horse by Bill Cooper.

just join you wuss

Send me the PDF Chris!

*YorkeDaddy has entered the chat*

Productive usage of PDFs does indeed make me horny

Also I might get in on this, around when do people think full discussions on the novel will start? A timeline will keep me motivated to actually read it

yay I was hoping that would actually summon you into the book club. I dunno about the timeline, there were suggestions of a few weeks?

I plan on finishing it and posting some thoughts by Friday. It's a pretty quick read.

Ok so I'm just starting out on this and already I can tell this is gonna be a headscratcher. Probably the reason why I didn't take to If on a winter's night...so lemme use this thread to try and understand it as I go along if I may:



Hmm? I expect many more of these questions in the coming days. Thank goodness this is a short book.

Those first two are among the more vague ones. Just let it wash over you, I'm still processing these but yeah, I think the first one has to do with envy of positive (and probably self-deceiving) melancholia and the second can be viewed as being about capitalism I think: you're trapped in a network of desires where basically the total amount of desire is conserved and you work to satisfy your own desires creating objects of desire for others (or even creating desire for fulfillment in yourself?)

Could be a good tactic, letting it wash over me. Thanks for the help...:)

I agree to let it wash over you. Some segments later on might be informing my answers below which isn't a huge spoiler really, but I'll throw the tags on them anyways.

I'm about 30% in but I'm bailing. I'm not connecting to this on any level and it would be pointless to continue just for the sake of a discussion, which would have to go to dissertation level on every chapter and ain't nobody got time for that. This is for people who like to spend time pondering what the meaning of particular sentences is. My brain doesn't work that way. It enjoys direct, clear, simple prose. Best of luck to you! :wavey:

Bummer, your questions sparked some pretty interesting conversation. Catch you on the next one.

Yeah I agree it's pointless to finish a book you don't like, but I think it's a pity, you were a valuable discussion partner. The strange thing is that I really feel like it's also enjoyable on an intuitive or emotional level. That's actually part of what I like so much about it, I have thoughts about that which I'll share later. Of course you can still discuss the general vibe of the book and the bits you've read if you want!

:laughing: my favorite type of prose! I went looking for an intelligent (spoiler free) take on it and found one.



I'm doing a chapter (or so) a day.

here are some general thoughts, I'll keep up the spoilering for now

Minor quibble: Despite the valiant effort I think we're missing something in the translation. MM, you say (in your spoiler), quite rightly, that the novel is evocative and I agree but English tends to flatten the ornamental nature of Italian. I wish I had a dual language edition of Cities. Sometimes I feel the Weaver translation drops the ball in situations where I just know Calvino means to make a graceful play.

That's actually a really good point. I don't know any Italian, but this is one of those books where you wish you could read the original.

Actually I thought about recommending my favourite Dutch book for this but I refrained from it because I think it wouldn't work in English

I found an Italian text online so you can do a comparison. I think it's virtually impossible to make a 100% correct translation but from what I gathered from my copy, the translation is quite good. The serbo-croatian one took some liberties that maybe captured the meaning better but who knows what the meaning is! I certainly didn't. :laughing: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/c...wer/dreamy.gif

I'd love to read it in Italian too but that'd be a ways off for me. I've been more focused on reading Spanish due to my obsession with magical realism as of late.

Any passages or chapters in particular that you feel dropped the ball, ando?

Note: not much to spoil really but I'm dropping the spoiler tags moving forward.

This is a reread for me so I'm taking copious notes this time around after just drinking it in the first time and adi was right about the dissertation level aspect of "fully" understanding the novel. Because of that it's been slower going for me than expected. Though certain themes begin to settle into the narrative over time (namely condemning the inherently restrictive nature of urban sprawl/metropolises, memories/desires conflicting with and overriding reality, and the risk of increasingly bellicose undertones required to maintain these), it's so multi-faceted and each thread gives you tonnes to pull on.

One thing I picked up on that I didn't quite notice before—and an interpretation that's been inconsistent so I'm not too sure of its veracity—is that many of the cities are described similarly to physical body parts and structures. When describing the physical features of Zora (Cities and Memories 4) for example, it seems like the city is divided into similar regions as our brain lobes. I̶s̶i̶d̶o̶r̶a̶ ̶(̶C̶i̶t̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶M̶e̶m̶o̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶2̶)̶ Anastasia (Cities and Desires 2): has concentric canals that are reminiscent of the relationship between the pupil, the iris, and the whites of the eyes, irrigated by tearducts. The toy globes of alternate realities in Fedora recall synapses. Dorothea's canals that subdivide and nourish the whole city is similar to the heart and circulatory system. Some of the Thin Cities (the most perplexing passages in the book imo) are reminiscent of circulatory and nervous systems. Would love to see if anyone else noticed similar trends (or thinks my thoughts are dumb af; Dorothea and the Thin Cities felt like a bit of a stretch).

I'll pop back in with some more macro interpretations once I finish it. I have thoughts on the mathematical structure that I want to verify before I blurt.

Btw, here is Calvino talking about his writing process for Invisible Cities in a way that's both enlightening and unnecessarily cryptic lol: https://thisiscitycentric.files.word...cture-1983.pdf

Yes, and there are general piccadillos that I won't elaborate on since I haven't finished the book. But MM's admiration for the city of Chloe made me jump to that particular chapter (yes, I cheated, though despite her marvelous illustration of the novel's momemtum/mathematical build, I don't really think order is vitally important). In one passage of that chatper all about a city of utter appearances and little or no human connection Marco spots a woman "showing her full age". Now, what? It can't have that literal meaning in Italian. Only a man could write that! It seems awkward and ill timed given the varied, splendid but entirely superficial descriptions of people, entirely apropos given the city, surrounding the woman and the description on the page. But that blip has to have been made in the translation. Just feels wrong. And a bit stupid. A tree can show its full age. But a woman? In a glance?

I downloaded a digital copy of the original Italian version (Mondadori Books). Should be interesting.

Thanks for the Calvino article on the book. I'll read it once I'm finished. Don't want him messing with my initial encounter with it! :D

on Frown's post: I think the body interpretation is cool, I hadn't noticed that. I agree Dorothea seems a stretch but with this book and the symbolism of cities as states of mind I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are meant that way. Do you have any specific ideas about the meaning these metaphors would have? The concentric canal city isn't Isidora, but that city does contain interesting shapes that I was wondering about: spirals and curves (the violins). I think the theme here is escalation and amplification (also curves and phallic telescopes -> desire?) possibly relating to how things are inflated in our memories and legends of the past?

on ando's post: I agree that that's peculiar, I hadn't paid attention to that. I definitely think the order in which to read the chapters isn't important, but maybe I'm missing something there.
I see Chloe in a different way though: I associate it with shyness and social inhibitions and how our fantasies and tension between people can build up because of that. Even without daring to approach people, there is always the nonverbal, almost electric interaction of things like exchanged glances or even sensing someone's presence. And even apart from the social aspect it holds up as a general contemplation on dreamworlds. Of course that interpretation is heavily influenced by my own personality and experience (I think your focus is also valid and interesting because it shows how strongly I'm tied to my perspective, and actually I think escaping our own view and seeing things in different ways is what many of these cities are partly about). But it's also my favourite city for that reason; I relate to it the most.

Oops, the canal/eye city was Anastasia. In that city, you see your desires all around you but that's the extent to which you experience it. The significance could be the sight's role in influencing the more vapid desires, the creation of which in turn robs us of our ability to truly fulfill any desire.

Zora's similarity to brain structure fits into the mnemonic theme of the chapter. Then Calvino goes into the threat of such devices when they exist as an unchanging closed system, which can be a comment on mental deterioration in the aging process or as a result of dogmatically clinging to a system beyond its relevancy.

Per Fedora, I think it's as simple as saying that imagined realities/desires/etc occupy just as much mental space as what we understand about reality.

Not sure how to connect Isidora to the body concept (though the spiral seashells did make me think of nipples lol). Maybe with the sexual imagery and the shift from "wild regions" to the city, there's a Malthusian theme about the youth pushing out the old? Maybe less likely is the idea that we can have an impact on the world to see our desires come to fruition, but do more to pave the path for those who follow us to fulfill these desires (which are borne of what we lack).

Finally finished my previous book. I gotta find my Kindle because I have a copy of Invisible Cities on there. I'll be joining in shortly.