See, Mr. Palomar is an observer. And he observes so many things, from a nude bather by the beach, to the cheese on display in a shop, to the moon and stars. And the way Calvino writes about these rather mundane events are just fascinating. Sometimes, I wonder, how can a simple event be characterised as such a complicated task? But it's not at all negative. Rather, it makes the quotidian very interesting.
I mean, who would have thought about writing the following: At that moment the whole line moves forward one place; and the person who till then had been standing beside the "Bleu d'Auvergne" veined with green now finds himself at the level of the "Brin a'mour", whose whiteness holds strands of dried straw stuck to it; the customer contemplating a ball wrapped in leaves can now concentrate on a cube dusted with ash. At each move forward, some customers are inspired by new stimuli and new desires: they may change their minds about what they were about to ask for or may add a new item to the list; and there are also those who never allow themselves to be distracted even for a moment from the objective they are pursuing - every different, fortuitous suggestion serves only to limit, through exclusion, the field of what they stubbornly want.
I mean, this paragraph really stuck to me. It's just a description of a very normal and ordinary event, something I myself personally experience almost every weekend when I am standing in the queue waiting to buy cheese at the farmer's market. Yet this description is so profound and of such a different perspective, as if this cheese-buying experience has been peeled of its many layers and analysed down to its inner core. This acute power of perception, coupled with the extraordinary ability for description, is perhaps what I find most captivating whenever I read Calvino.
Oh, I should also mention the fact that this novel - though rather short - actually is very mathematically conceptualised. There are three layers of complexity, manifested as three large sections. And each section has its own three-layered complexity, as each contains three sub-sections. And finally, each sub-section has three chapters, again, corresponding to the same idea. As I said, Calvino is brilliant, and this novel, no matter how short it is, does not disappoint. And for that, I give it 5 out of 5 stars. I definitely liked this one.
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