The Origin of the Birds
I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out some way to explain why I think Calvino chose to describe the actions in this story as if he were describing the panels in a comic strip. He’s too good of a writer to just arbitrarily use such a device, but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.
Maybe I just don’t ‘get’ the math but I like the merging of the known and the possible worlds.
I’ll admit surprise here upon discovering that a 19th century novel written by a man has an actual well-rounded woman character surrounded by a cast of male, moronic dopes as opposed to how every other book this century typically turns out (I’m looking at you, Tolstoy).
Still, I think I’ve counted ‘the Jew’ well over 100 times so that negates any good will his well written Nancy.
The Soft Moon
I never heard of Calvino until Radiolab’s recent reading of his story ‘The Distance of the Moon’; I immediately fell in love.
This is another story of the moon, only here it appears as sort of a gooey, rogue ‘planet’ that is captured by the earth’s gravity and begins to melt out of the sky and destroys an ancient, but more advanced civilization than our own.
Trippy, organic, weird & very cool.