Italo Calvino, “The city lost in the snow.” In Marcovaldo, trans. William Weaver (New York: HarperCollins, 1983).
Marcovaldo is a book of twenty vignettes about an Italian warehouse worker (Marcovaldo) whose efforts always bring about unforeseen consequences. Strong resemblances to silent-film comedy at every turn.
Here, for instance, Marcovaldo dreams of getting lost in a different city as he walks, but his path leads straight to work, and he finds himself once again in the shipping department, “as if the change that had cancelled the outside world had spared only his firm.”
Steven Millhauser has named Marcovaldo as one of his favorite short-story collections: that’s how our household came to it.
For snow and silence, see also Pierre Reverdy’s prose poem “Souffle.”
Related reading
All OCA Italo Calvino posts (Pinboard)
[It is not snowing and it is not going to snow in east-central Illinois today.]
Friday, February 23, 2024
“Snow!”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
comments: 3
Michael, I enjoyed Millhauser’s list of story collections. I hope at some point you’ll share yours.
Hmm — it would have to include Cather's Obscure Destinies, Joyce's Dubliners, Kafka, something from Alice Munro, Salinger'sNine Stories, and this book. After that it would get difficult, because Millhauser would begin to swamp any list.
Oh — also something by Robert Walser, probably Berlin Stories.
Post a Comment