Book Review: "Mr. Palomar" by Italo Calvino

I adored this book because there was a lot I could contemplate. As you know, I love these deep, meaningful, philosophically written over-the-top descriptions of minute details on which I can muse about for ages as opposed to quick plot scenes and/or dialogue that goes on forever. I prefer the long descriptions because of their ability to unlock a certain feeling inside me that normally, I feel increasingly difficult to access. I think it might be happiness, but I honestly don’t know. It’s almost sublime to feel it. Like I can shut my eyes after reading the description and really feel it going through my body, feeling like I’m there and I’m looking directly at this thoroughly with all the philosophical contemplation this thing or person is seeking. That is exactly what I did with “Mr. Palomar” by Italo Calvino. It was one of those special books that contained these very particular, long-winded and beautifully written descriptions that I loved, blended with a deep affection for life and observation.

Let us now take a look at quotation - particularly that focused on the way in which description is just so brilliantly written on many different levels. So let us go with this one which I absolutely adored which was from the near beginning of the book:

“The sea is barely wrinkled and little waves strike the sandy shore. Mr Palomar is standing on the shore looking at a wave. Not that he is lost in contemplation of the waves. He is not lost, because he is quite aware of what he is doing: he wants to look at a wave and he is looking at it. He is not contemplating, because for contemplation you need the right temperament, the right mood, the right combination of exterior circumstances; and though Mr Palomar has nothing against contemplation in principle, none of these three conditions applies to him. Finally, it is not the waves that he means to look at, but just one individual wave: in his desire to avoid vague sensations, he establishes for his every action a limited and precise object. Mr Palomar sees a wave rise in the distance, grow, approach, change form and colour, fold over itself, break, vanish, and flow again. At this point he could convince himself that he has concluded the operation he had set out to achieve and he could go away. But it is very difficult to isolate one wave, separating it from the other waves immediately following it, which seems at times to push it and at times overtakes it and sweeps it away; just as it is difficult to separate that one wave from the other wave that precedes it and seems to drag it towards the shore unless it turns against its follower as if to arrest it…”

You have to admit, that is one brilliant quotation about the contemplation of waves and how they operate in almost a social way with the other waves of the ocean, promoting people to contemplate upon their existence.

When it comes to Italo Calvino, I have read very many of his works but I am also discovering new works by him - which I love. I found this similar to reading something like “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” because of the lack of dialogue and the puzzling contemplations, or like “Path to the Spider’s Nest” because of the way the text can deal with some more controversial topics, being described in simplistic terms and noting the blank morality which suggests what is going on is neither good nor bad, but instead is a direct product of the environment in which the character lives. Calvino’s works always surprise me and they are constantly written with close attention and with complex ideas around descriptions that can only be found out as a result of putting all of these directions together, we can truly find out the meaning.

As a conclusion, this book is possibly one of my favourites by this particular author because of his ability to really play with contemplation which I dot think that he can be equalled. There is something about his post-modernist writing that will never fail to invite my soul to enjoy it.