Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was a major Italian writer (actually, he was born in Cuba but moved to Italy when he was very young) from the 1950s until his death in 1985. His writings were often witty, often humorous, and nearly always filled with the remarkable and the fantastic. He is often compared to Borges, Kafka, and Garcia Marquez, but some of his works – especially some of his shorter works – also can be compared to those of Stanislaw Lem when Lem is at his most witty and humorous (the Lem of The Cyberiad rather than the Lem of Solaris).
Cosmicomics is a collection of short stories about this history of the universe – and, of course, about us. All are told from the point of view of Qfwfq, a being who has existed since before the big bang (when he and all other beings shared the same point in space). Calvino picks various points in the history of the universe – all starting with what seem like quotes from a book on astronomy or astrophysics – and from there Qfwfq tells a story. Qfwfq is eccentric, egotistical, and, in the end, likeable (perhaps because this immortal being is very human).
“The Distance of the Moon,” the first story in the collection is in some ways the most atypical, reading more like a fantasy out of Baron Munchausen than anything else. Calvino starts with the fact that the moon used to be closer to the earth, and from it creates a love story set in a time when the moon was close enough that people could reach it via a ladder.
Other stories in the book take bits of cosmology (Calvino seems to cheerfully use both big bang and steady state theories), cosmic evolution, the geometry of space time, and the evolutions of life on earth. Some stories reflect on the universe and our place in it, others look at our own vanity. In “Light-Years,” for example, the narrator (presumably Qfwfq , though not named in this story) sees someone in a galaxy a hundred million light years away hold up a sign saying “I saw you.” He looks back in his diary and finds that, two hundred million years earlier (the time of the event that the being in the distant galaxy saw), he had done something he wasn’t proud of. He then spends many hundreds of millions of years worrying about who he is viewed by others and hoping that they saw what good he did at other times.
“The Spiral” is probably the best story in the book. The narrator is a mollusk, who starts before shells had evolved, perfectly at peace to simply eat and feel. But then his is attracted to a female, and this sets off a pattern of love, jealousy, and caring that eventually causes him to evolve a shell, so that she can tell him from all other mollusks. The shell is described in beautiful detail. But of course all the primitive mollusks are connected, so that the narrator’s creation of a shell causes all to create shells. As the years pass, other creates evolve sight, so they can see the shells of t he mollusks, which ironically the mollusks themselves cannot see.
All of the stories are delightful and entertaining as well as insightful. If you haven’t yet read Calvino, do give him a try. This collection of shorts is a good starting point, but you can’t go wrong with pretty any of his works, including his great novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies or the wonderful novellas “The Nonexistent Knight” and “The Cloven Viscount.”
Italo Calvino was a major Italian writer (actually, he was born in Cuba but moved to Italy when he was very young) from the 1950s until his death in 1985. His writings were often witty, often humorous, and nearly always filled with the remarkable and the fantastic. He is often compared to Borges, Kafka, and Garcia Marquez, but some of his works – especially some of his shorter works – also can be compared to those of Stanislaw Lem when Lem is at his most witty and humorous (the Lem of The Cyberiad rather than the Lem of Solaris).
Cosmicomics is a collection of short stories about this history of the universe – and, of course, about us. All are told from the point of view of Qfwfq, a being who has existed since before the big bang (when he and all other beings shared the same point in space). Calvino picks various points in the history of the universe – all starting with what seem like quotes from a book on astronomy or astrophysics – and from there Qfwfq tells a story. Qfwfq is eccentric, egotistical, and, in the end, likeable (perhaps because this immortal being is very human).
“The Distance of the Moon,” the first story in the collection is in some ways the most atypical, reading more like a fantasy out of Baron Munchausen than anything else. Calvino starts with the fact that the moon used to be closer to the earth, and from it creates a love story set in a time when the moon was close enough that people could reach it via a ladder.
Other stories in the book take bits of cosmology (Calvino seems to cheerfully use both big bang and steady state theories), cosmic evolution, the geometry of space time, and the evolutions of life on earth. Some stories reflect on the universe and our place in it, others look at our own vanity. In “Light-Years,” for example, the narrator (presumably Qfwfq , though not named in this story) sees someone in a galaxy a hundred million light years away hold up a sign saying “I saw you.” He looks back in his diary and finds that, two hundred million years earlier (the time of the event that the being in the distant galaxy saw), he had done something he wasn’t proud of. He then spends many hundreds of millions of years worrying about who he is viewed by others and hoping that they saw what good he did at other times.
“The Spiral” is probably the best story in the book. The narrator is a mollusk, who starts before shells had evolved, perfectly at peace to simply eat and feel. But then his is attracted to a female, and this sets off a pattern of love, jealousy, and caring that eventually causes him to evolve a shell, so that she can tell him from all other mollusks. The shell is described in beautiful detail. But of course all the primitive mollusks are connected, so that the narrator’s creation of a shell causes all to create shells. As the years pass, other creates evolve sight, so they can see the shells of t he mollusks, which ironically the mollusks themselves cannot see.
All of the stories are delightful and entertaining as well as insightful. If you haven’t yet read Calvino, do give him a try. This collection of shorts is a good starting point, but you can’t go wrong with pretty any of his works, including his great novel The Castle of Crossed Destinies or the wonderful novellas “The Nonexistent Knight” and “The Cloven Viscount.”
posted by Jim Mann at 7:01 PM
1 Comments:
The one about the last of the dinosaurs, and My Aquatic Uncle are among Calvino's wittiest, funniest I think.
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