Mr. Palomar

Yesterday I finished reading Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino. It was a really enjoyable book and did some excellent work exploring various ways of "seeing" the world. For those of you who don't know Italo Calvino borrowed the name from the observatory in Spain. The choice of name was perfect because Mr. Palomar is much like this telescope, or rather, he could be interpreted as the eye and even the "mind's eye" looking through the telescope. This work deals mostly with the ways to view things- in both the simple sense of viewing and the complex, meaning-filled sense of viewing.

The work is set up in three overall sections of setting-- Mr. Palomar on Vacation, Mr. Palomar in the City, and The Silences of Mr. Palomar. Within each of these settings are three more sets of three narratives. In the index Calvino even broke down the work further to explain that the sections of each subset are ordered purposefully to depict progression from strict observance into philosophical narrative. For example sections denoted with 1. are typically written with Mr. Palomar observing the topical sense of what he is observing. Sections marked 2. deal with his observance of something taken in a cultural or anthropological sense. Sections marked 3. take his observations and apply them internally to Mr. Palomar himself.

This was a really nice work to read after Under the Jaguar Sun. While Under the Jaguar Sun dealt with three of the five senses (touch and sight missing) Mr. Palomar focused almost completely on sight filling the gap left in one of the missing senses. It was interesting to consider how Calvino may have completed his novel of the senses had he had the chance to finish it-- I assume that he would have taken many of the themes from Mr. Palomar if not direct lines. Now that I've read a couple of Calvino stories I think I might move on to something else... most likely Fury by Salman Rushdie or Collected Novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm kind of thinking Collected Novellas because I haven't read any Marquez since Christmas and it's kind of nice to read shorter narratives when the end of the semester is here. But If you are really interested in reading some Calvino for yourself here is a link for the full text Mr. Palomar online!