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copperbadge (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} copperbadge) wrote,@ 2008-11-23 16:44:00 |
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Review: Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino
I've been meaning to write a review of Cosmicomics for about a week and a half, and if I put it off any more I'm going to have late fees on it, but I'm really not sure how to talk about it.
As with much of my high school lit classes, when I read Italo Calvino's work I'm often haunted by the feeling that I am missing something. Something important, some vital theme that's just out of my reach. Which makes it hard to review his books, actually. I don't know that I am missing anything, I think maybe I'm overthinking it, but I dunno. It's not unpleasant, and no reflection on the book, but it makes it hard to be coherent about it.
Cosmicomics, like Invisible Cities, is very episodic in nature. Calvino takes several of the laws and theorems of physics and the creation of the universe and retells them as if one person had lived through them all, linking the impersonal science to the personal experience. It's kind of like what would happen if Stephen Hawking and Rudyard Kipling had a love child.
The narrator, Qfwfq, tells several stories about the creation of the universe and of the Earth as if he were telling stories to kids around a campfire. Most of his companions also have names that are either palindromes or reminiscient of mathematical formulas, and the implication is that most of them are immortal as well. Or perhaps immortal is the wrong word; everlasting consciousnesses would be a better way of describing them.
Calvino is practically a genre unto himself, the way he writes; you have to just kind of accept the way he warps reality. It's not unpleasant, which I think is why I like him so much, because so many people who try to twist the world up in order to get a point across make it ugly and brutal, and while I'm sure ugly and brutal has its place I don't think it should have every place.
The stories range from a love-triangle thwarted by the moon to the personal experience of the last of the dinosaurs, living amongst the new animals who have succeeded his race. A lot of them are romances, which is probably the reason I don't like Cosmicomics as well as I like Invisible Cities. I don't know that I enjoy the way Calvino illustrates interpersonal relationships; they always seem cartoonish and a little bit cruel. I prefer it when he's talking about places and sights, basically things that don't involve people. This may be my natural misanthropy coming to the fore, however.
Cosmicomics isn't an illustration of physical principles or an explanation of the complex theories of creation. It's closer to a modern day mythology, based on those principles and theories. Sometimes they're used to show elements of human nature, but I'm sometimes dissatisfied with the way in which it is shown. The story I liked the most, about the last of the dinosaurs, was a good combination of history and social analysis; I really liked seeing the New Ones from the Dinosaur's point of view, and the journey of the Dinosaur outsider to understanding what the extinction of his race means. I also liked the story of the galaxies drifting further away from each other, but only because I thought the signs that Qfwfq used to draw distant galaxies' attentions to his triumphs were funny. And maybe a little bit because it seems to be about shyness and social anxiety, so I could relate.
Interestingly, when I was reading the beginning portions of the book, I often thought that this would make a good tie-in to a Torchwood fic. I think Jack Harkness would like Cosmicomics immensely.
I enjoyed reading it, but to be honest ten days later I don't really remember it very clearly, which means it didn't make much of an impact.
Quotes!
According to my great-uncle, the lands that had emerged were a limited phenomenon: they were going to disappear just as they had cropped up or, in any event, they would be subject to constant changes: volcanoes, glaciations, earthquakes, upheavals, changes of climate and of vegetation. And our life in the midst of all this would have to face constant transformations, in the course of which whole races would disappear, and the only survivors would be those who were preparing to change the bases of their expistence so radically that the reasons why living was beautiful would be completely overwhelmed and forgotten.
--p. 78
I realised that with what seemed a casual jumble of words I had hit on an infinite reserve of new combinations among the signs which compact, opaque, uniform reality would use to disguise its monotony, and I realised that perhaps the race toward the future, the race I had been the first to foresee and desire, tended only -- through time and space -- toward a crumbling into alternatives like this...
-- p. 90
What was I to do? That night I couldn't close my eyes. The call of my blood insisted I should desert and join my brothers; loyalty to the New Ones, who had welcomed and sheltered me and given me their trust, demanded I should consider myself on their side; and in addition I knew full well that neither Dinosaurs nor New Ones were worthy of my lifting a finger for them. If the Dinosaurs were trying to re-establish their rule with invasions and massacres, it meant they had learned nothing from experience, that they had survived only by mistake. And it was clear that the New Ones, turning command over to me, had found the easiest solution: leave all responsibility to an outsider, who could be their savior but also, in case of defeat, a scapegoat to hand over to the enemy.
-- p. 106
I had no use for this pity of theirs. Pity for what? If ever a species had had a rich, full evolution, a long and happy reign, that species was ours. Our extinction had been a grandiose epilogue, worthy of our past. What could those fools understand of it?
-- p. 109
In a certain sense, I could set my mind at rest: no action of mine, good or bad, was completely lost. At least an echo of it was always saved; or rather, several echoes, which varied from one end of the universe to the other, and in that sphere which was expanding and generating other spheres.
-- p. 136
The important thing was that, in everything I did, it should be clear what was essential, where the stress should be placed, what was to be noted and what not. I procured an enormous directional sign, one of those huge hands with the pointing index finger. When I performed an action to which I wanted to call attention, I had only to raise that sign, trying to make the finger point at the most important detail of the scene. For the moments when, instead, I preferred not to be observed, I made another sign, a hand with the thumb pointing in the direction opposite the one I was turning, to distract attention.
-- 136
Meanwhile, the galaxies for whom I was most compromised were already revolving around the threshold of the billions of light-years at such speeds that, to reach them, my messages would have to struggle across space, clinging to their accelerating flight: then, one by one, they would disappear from the last ten-billion-light-year horizon beyond which no visible object can be seen, and they would bear with them a judgment by then irrevocable.
-- 138
I've been meaning to write a review of Cosmicomics for about a week and a half, and if I put it off any more I'm going to have late fees on it, but I'm really not sure how to talk about it.
As with much of my high school lit classes, when I read Italo Calvino's work I'm often haunted by the feeling that I am missing something. Something important, some vital theme that's just out of my reach. Which makes it hard to review his books, actually. I don't know that I am missing anything, I think maybe I'm overthinking it, but I dunno. It's not unpleasant, and no reflection on the book, but it makes it hard to be coherent about it.
Cosmicomics, like Invisible Cities, is very episodic in nature. Calvino takes several of the laws and theorems of physics and the creation of the universe and retells them as if one person had lived through them all, linking the impersonal science to the personal experience. It's kind of like what would happen if Stephen Hawking and Rudyard Kipling had a love child.
The narrator, Qfwfq, tells several stories about the creation of the universe and of the Earth as if he were telling stories to kids around a campfire. Most of his companions also have names that are either palindromes or reminiscient of mathematical formulas, and the implication is that most of them are immortal as well. Or perhaps immortal is the wrong word; everlasting consciousnesses would be a better way of describing them.
Calvino is practically a genre unto himself, the way he writes; you have to just kind of accept the way he warps reality. It's not unpleasant, which I think is why I like him so much, because so many people who try to twist the world up in order to get a point across make it ugly and brutal, and while I'm sure ugly and brutal has its place I don't think it should have every place.
The stories range from a love-triangle thwarted by the moon to the personal experience of the last of the dinosaurs, living amongst the new animals who have succeeded his race. A lot of them are romances, which is probably the reason I don't like Cosmicomics as well as I like Invisible Cities. I don't know that I enjoy the way Calvino illustrates interpersonal relationships; they always seem cartoonish and a little bit cruel. I prefer it when he's talking about places and sights, basically things that don't involve people. This may be my natural misanthropy coming to the fore, however.
Cosmicomics isn't an illustration of physical principles or an explanation of the complex theories of creation. It's closer to a modern day mythology, based on those principles and theories. Sometimes they're used to show elements of human nature, but I'm sometimes dissatisfied with the way in which it is shown. The story I liked the most, about the last of the dinosaurs, was a good combination of history and social analysis; I really liked seeing the New Ones from the Dinosaur's point of view, and the journey of the Dinosaur outsider to understanding what the extinction of his race means. I also liked the story of the galaxies drifting further away from each other, but only because I thought the signs that Qfwfq used to draw distant galaxies' attentions to his triumphs were funny. And maybe a little bit because it seems to be about shyness and social anxiety, so I could relate.
Interestingly, when I was reading the beginning portions of the book, I often thought that this would make a good tie-in to a Torchwood fic. I think Jack Harkness would like Cosmicomics immensely.
I enjoyed reading it, but to be honest ten days later I don't really remember it very clearly, which means it didn't make much of an impact.
Quotes!
According to my great-uncle, the lands that had emerged were a limited phenomenon: they were going to disappear just as they had cropped up or, in any event, they would be subject to constant changes: volcanoes, glaciations, earthquakes, upheavals, changes of climate and of vegetation. And our life in the midst of all this would have to face constant transformations, in the course of which whole races would disappear, and the only survivors would be those who were preparing to change the bases of their expistence so radically that the reasons why living was beautiful would be completely overwhelmed and forgotten.
--p. 78
I realised that with what seemed a casual jumble of words I had hit on an infinite reserve of new combinations among the signs which compact, opaque, uniform reality would use to disguise its monotony, and I realised that perhaps the race toward the future, the race I had been the first to foresee and desire, tended only -- through time and space -- toward a crumbling into alternatives like this...
-- p. 90
What was I to do? That night I couldn't close my eyes. The call of my blood insisted I should desert and join my brothers; loyalty to the New Ones, who had welcomed and sheltered me and given me their trust, demanded I should consider myself on their side; and in addition I knew full well that neither Dinosaurs nor New Ones were worthy of my lifting a finger for them. If the Dinosaurs were trying to re-establish their rule with invasions and massacres, it meant they had learned nothing from experience, that they had survived only by mistake. And it was clear that the New Ones, turning command over to me, had found the easiest solution: leave all responsibility to an outsider, who could be their savior but also, in case of defeat, a scapegoat to hand over to the enemy.
-- p. 106
I had no use for this pity of theirs. Pity for what? If ever a species had had a rich, full evolution, a long and happy reign, that species was ours. Our extinction had been a grandiose epilogue, worthy of our past. What could those fools understand of it?
-- p. 109
In a certain sense, I could set my mind at rest: no action of mine, good or bad, was completely lost. At least an echo of it was always saved; or rather, several echoes, which varied from one end of the universe to the other, and in that sphere which was expanding and generating other spheres.
-- p. 136
The important thing was that, in everything I did, it should be clear what was essential, where the stress should be placed, what was to be noted and what not. I procured an enormous directional sign, one of those huge hands with the pointing index finger. When I performed an action to which I wanted to call attention, I had only to raise that sign, trying to make the finger point at the most important detail of the scene. For the moments when, instead, I preferred not to be observed, I made another sign, a hand with the thumb pointing in the direction opposite the one I was turning, to distract attention.
-- 136
Meanwhile, the galaxies for whom I was most compromised were already revolving around the threshold of the billions of light-years at such speeds that, to reach them, my messages would have to struggle across space, clinging to their accelerating flight: then, one by one, they would disappear from the last ten-billion-light-year horizon beyond which no visible object can be seen, and they would bear with them a judgment by then irrevocable.
-- 138
