Numbers in the Dark

by Italo Calvino, Tim Parks (Translator)

For the first time in paperback—a volume of thirty-seven diabolically inventive stories, fables, and "impossible interviews" from one of the great fantasists of the 20th century, displaying the full breadth of his vision and wit.  Written between 1943 and 1984 and masterfully translated by Tim Parks, the fictions in Numbers in the Dark display all of Calvino's dazzling gifts: whimsy and horror, exuberance of style, and a cheerful grasp of the absurdities of the human condition.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Italian Literature, Literature, Italy, 20th Century, Classics

292 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Italo Calvino was born in Cuba and grew up in Italy. He was a journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979).

His style is not easy to classify; much of his writing has an air reminiscent to that of fantastical fairy tales (Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics), although sometimes his writing is more "realistic" and in the scenic mode of observation (Difficult Loves, for example). Some of his writing has been called postmodern, reflecting on literature and the act of reading, while some has been labeled magical realist, others fables, others simply "modern". He wrote: "My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language."

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of stories/fables/dialogues put together posthumously by Italo Calvino's widow Esther, spanning the years 1943-1984. Sometimes the title story of a collection of stories doesn't always work out to be the best, but in this case it absolutely did. Of the 37 pieces - ranging from a couple of pages to about 20 - there is flashes of Calvino brilliance here and there, but also a good few of them that I found just mediocre. Along with Numbers in the Dark, other highlights for me were - The Lost Regiment, The Queen's Necklace (unfinished), A Beautiful March Day, Beheading the Heads, & Henry Ford. Read tons of him previously, and even though I don't feel as enchanted and hooked on his work like I did then, this was still a nice little treat, having not read him for ages.

[Argos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tümü de dergilerde yayınlanmış ancak kitaplarında yer almayan yazılar. Baştaki kısacık yedi kıssa ile birlikte 32 öykü yeralıyor kitapta. Calvino kitabı tarihsel olarak ikiye ayırmış, 1943-58 arasındakilere kıssalar ve hikayeler demiş, 1968-84 arasındakilere de öyküler ve diyaloglar adını vermiş.

İlk bölümde belirgin olarak sözcüklerin somut anlamlarını kullanıyor, sonra ise özellikle son romanlarında olduğu gibi soyut kavramlar öne geçmiş durumda. Aynı şekilde ilk bölümde hayal gücüne daha az sesleniyor ve gündelik dili yaygın kullanıyor. Kısaca henüz postmodern tarzda yazmaya başlamadığı öyküler ağırlıkta. Zaten sunuş yazısında gerçeklere dayalı nesnel yazı ile düşüncelerinin ancak bir kısmını dile getirebildiğini söylüyor ki daha sonraki üslup ve yazı biçimini belirleyen de bu husus bence.

İkinci bölümdeki öyküler daha güncel ve daha Calvinovari. Bence “diyalog”u en iyi kullanan yazarlardan ilk sıralarda yer alan Calvino bu öykülerde bolca diyalog kullanmış. “Neandertal Adamı” isimli öykü tipik bir Calvino diyaloğu. Aztek kralı ile yaptığı hayali söyleşi “Moktezuma” ise kitabın en düşündürücü ve etkileyici hikayesi. “Vicdan” ve “Elindekiyle Yetinmesini Bilmek” de hoş bir tat bırakıyor. Henry Ford ile hayali söyleşisinde sanayi devrimi ve makinalaşmayı pek de güzel anlatıyor.

Genel olarak politik öykülerindeki tutumu şu; oyun hamurunu alıyor, tek renk, başlıyor onunla şekiller yapmaya, bu tek renk hamurdan her öyküsü için farklı bir şekil ortaya çıkıyor, ama her şekil birbirini çağrıştırıyor. İnsan ve doğa temalı öykülerde ise değişik renk ve cins oyun hamurları kullanıyor, bazılarını bitiriyor bazılarını daha bitmemiş izlenimi verecek şekilde sona erdiriyor. Güldürmek için yazmıyor, gülerken düşündürmek için yazıyor. Mizahı öyle incelikli kullanıyor ki, kafa bulduğunu anlamak bazen zaman alıyor. İroni ise baş silahı.

Calvino’nun romanlarını veya uzun öykülerini çok severim, ancak Calvino’yu keşfetmek isteyenlere kısa öykülerinden başlamasını öneririm, “Zor Sevdalar” gibi. Bu kitap iyi bir seçim olabilir, çünkü Calvino’nun farklı yazım türleriyle tanışmaları gerçekleşecektir.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking to read some Calvino for the first time, do not buy this book. May I instead highly recommend the magnificent The Complete Cosmicomics - it will not disappoint.

'Numbers in the Dark' an interesting and creative collection of short stories. Not all of them are good (this coming from a hardcore Calvino fan) but arguably the collection is the more interesting for it. His earlier stories are either delightfully simple yet engaging parables or more long-winded forays into philosophy (like If On a Winter's Night a Traveler but far less skillful). In the latter category we have 'The Man Who Shouted Teresa,' a charming story about community. 'Conscience' is an engaging parable about the supposed difference between killing in war and murder. 'The Black Sheep' is a funny yet thought provoking creation myth for inequality (an egalitarian society of thieves collapses into injustice because of the arrival of an honest man). 'Good for Nothing' is also interesting, dealing with issues of paranoia and strangers knowing more than they should. 'The General in the Library' is also an engaging read, as is 'A Beatiful March Day' - one of my favourites, it looks at Caesar's assassination through the eyes of one of the senators who kills him.

Not so impressive to my mind are some of the more lengthy and postmodern stories. 'Dry River,' for instance, may be a metaphor for some event of postwar Italian politics but it doesn't excuse the lack of plot, character development, anything. The great thing about Calvino is how he deals with fascinating concepts and metafiction without seeming at all prentious, but you get the feeling in this story as well as in 'Love Far From Home' and (to a lesser extent) 'Wind In A City' that he is almost taking his thoughts too seriously, without either the slightly playful and irreverent style which makes him so readable but also without the literary chops to say what he really means. Still, there are also signs of emerging skill: 'Numbers in the Dark' is an elegant and intriguing story of an office at night seen through the eyes of a boy. 'Nocturnal Soliloquy of a Scottish Nobleman' is also worth a read - even if you don't know about
Italian political parties and their power struggles (and nor do I), it is a fine allegory for how the lesser of two evils can end up being more dangerous and how your enemy's enemy, when your enemy is gone, will turn on you.

The second section of the book is even better, in my opinion. 'World Memory' is a great story, with an imaginative concept, rising tension and a spine-chilling twist at the end. 'Beheading the Heads,' an unfinished concept for a novel, imagines a nation where all leaders and politicians inevitably have their heads chopped off after a certain amount of time. An interesting idea! And yet it really does work - Calvino gives us a fascinating insight into the heart of an alternative October Revolution. 'The Burning of the Abominable House' and 'Before You Say Hello' fit well into the existing anthology. The former, a postmodernist murder mystery with a twist, reminds me of 'The Chase' - a classic found in 'Complete Cosmicomics.' 'Before...' reminds me more of 'If on a winter's night a traveller' - in fact, one of the stories also involves looking at the mechanisms of phones and phone calls in obsessive detail. Calvino is on form when pondering whether phones are a more or less personal mode of communication - his conclusion may surprise you. The final three works of particular note (the others include some Qfwfq stories and a surprisingly relevant tale of technology 'The Last Channel') are the interviews. These are really remarkable, imaginative and thought provoking. The interview with Montezuma, last emperor of the Aztecs, is particularly worth reading. It challenges the common knowledge version of events and, especially, motivations involved in the collapse of that great western civilization (and the Aztecs too...). The interviews with Ford and Neanderthal Man are also clever and well-written, with Calvino giving the industrialist some interesting arguments to counter his detractors and the Neanderthal humourously dealing with his patronising interviewer.

So should you read this book or not? It depends how much of this author you have read before. I stand by my recommendation of 'Complete Cosmicomics' as the ideal introduction to Calvino; this collection might benefit more those who already have an idea of the great man's unique style, and who would appreciate an insight into how Calvino evolved over his career.

[Aslı Can]

Italo Calvino okumayı deneyip, zorlu bulanlar ve yine de ilgi duyanlar için uygun bir kitap. Yine muzur ama biraz daha sakin ve küçük öyküler var içinde. Öykülerin büyük bir kısmı politika ve dünya meseleleri ile ilgili. Ben genellikle bu tarz politik fikirler barındıran öyküleri fazla slogan barındırdığını hissettiğim için sevmesem de Italo Calvino'nun yazdıkları beni rahatsız etmiyor. İtalo Calvino dünyaya ilginç düzeneklerle yerleştirilmiş değişik aynalarla baktığı için en klişe konuları bile eğip bükerek, ilgi çekici hale getirebiliyor benim için.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 5 out of 5]

Canımın içi Italo Calvino yine üzmedi - kendisinin öykü derlemesi "Sen Alo Demeden Önce"ye bayıldım. Kitap, yazarın "Kıssalar ve Hikayeler" ve "Öyküler ve Diyaloglar" adını verdiği iki bölümden oluşuyor. 1943-1984 arasında yazılmış öyküler bunlar, yani yazarın dilinin evrilmesini, kendi üslubunu bulmasını da takip ediyoruz aslında okurken. İkinci bölümdeki, daha ilerleyen yıllarda yazdığı görece daha uzun öyküler daha Calvinomsu ama ben ilk bölümdekileri de çok çok beğendim. Özellikle kıssaları. İnsan 20li yaşlarında bunları nasıl yazar, vallahi olacak iş değil.

Neyse, kıssalara bir parantez açmak istiyorum çünkü 1, maksimum 2 sayfalık bu küçük öykülerini müthiş güçlü buldum. Zamanı, mekanı belirtmeden, muğlak bir düzlemde ve çokça absürt biçimde kurguladığı bu minik ve çoklukla siyasi metinlerde sisteme, savaşa, insana, ahlaka dair pek çok mantıksızlığı o kadar lezzetli ve asla didaktikleşmeden önümüze seriyor ki, bayıldım. İyi öykücülük bence böyle bir şey zaten, azıcık kelimeyle, süslü cümleler ve aforizmalar kullanmadan çat diye insanın yüzüne vurmak meseleyi. Özellikle "Elindekiyle Yetinmesini Bilmek", "Vicdan" ve "Yüz Karası" kıssalarını çok çok sevdim.

İkinci bölümdeyse diyaloglar öne çıkıyor. Calvino çok iyi bir diyalog yazarıdır, hep çok akışkan bulmuşumdur yazdığı diyalogları, burada da karşılıklı konuşma biçiminde yazdığı öyküler çok iyiydi. "Neandertal Adam", "Montezuma" ve "Henry Ford" öykülerinin özellikle okunmasını önermek isterim.

Daha önce Calvino okuyanlar, bu öykülerde başka eserlerinin izlerini de bulacaklar - örneğin başyapıtı Görünmez Kentler'in bu kitaptaki Kazanova'nın Anıları'ndan devşirildiğini düşünmek için haklı sebeplerimiz olduğunu okuyunca göreceğinizi düşünüyorum.

Yazmaya devam edersem başka öyküleri de sıralayacağımı fark ettim, duruyorum. Zira indekse baktıkça her birini ayrı ayrı sevdiğimi ve hepsiyle ilgili edecek birkaç lafım olduğunu fark ediyorum, bu da bana bunun ne kadar zengin bir kitap olduğunu bir kez daha gösteriyor.

Calvino'nun diğer öykü derlemesi olan Zor Sevdalar'a bayılırım, bunu da en az onun kadar çok sevdim. Okuyunuz diyorum. ❤️

[Elis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Come sempre Calvino continua ad insegnarmi a vivere; in ogni sua parola trovo tracce di gesti che compio e che compierò. Pezzi di vita e di giornate, come il farsi la doccia, Calvino le fa diventare storie con pensieri profondi che dici "diamine, perché non c'ho pensato io?".

E' una raccolta di aneddoti e storie brevi che Calvino spesso non ha concluso. E' uno di quei libri leggeri, che ho letto un poco ogni volta prima di andare a dormire. E' uno di quei libri carini ed indispensabili che regalerei solo ad una persona a cui voglio bene, perché sarei gelosa a condividere questi pensieri con chi non li merita veramente. L'ho detto.
E' stato uno di quei libri che una volta finito, ho pensato che sarei stata felice a riceverlo da qualcuno. Purtroppo, me lo sono regalata da sola e devo dire che mi sono fatta proprio ma proprio un bel regalo!

[KnownAsLavinia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un due stelle? A Calvino? Ma sei matta direte voi?
Oh io ve lo devo dire, è stato faticosissimo finire questa raccolta e una volta finita comunque mi chiedo perché ho insistito tanto e non ho lasciato perdere a metà.
Deve essere qualcosa nella scrittura che proprio non fa per me, pagine e pagine per raccontare un tizio che fa benzina ad una pompa di benzina, uno che si fa la doccia, uno che chiama donne. No. Non ci riesco proprio, una noia mortale, questo italiano inutilmente ricercato pomposo frasi lunghissime. C’è a chi piace da morire, a me proprio no.
Preferisco il Calvino dei romanzi!!

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly one of the best short-story collections I have ever read. It covers the entire span of Calvino's writing career, and his early charming and offbeat fables (the first written when he was 19) are just as entertaining as the mature and complex thought-experiments of his later work. There are very few Calvino stories remaining that I haven't yet read. Numbers in the Dark includes extracts from unfinished and unpublished novels that he transformed into short-stories as well as embryonic projects that might have developed into more substantial pieces had he lived longer (for example 'The Memoirs of Casanova' follows a similar pattern to Invisible Cities).

I first obtained this volume back in 1996 and I read half of it; then I lost it. Many years later, in 2010, I picked up another edition and once again only got about halfway through it before life intervened and I was distracted from finishing it. I wonder if I was subconsciously sabotaging my efforts to read the complete book because I knew that once I was done with it, there would be almost no new Calvino left for me to read. But finally I bought a third copy and now have read the whole book. I am intrigued to discover that my opinion of some of the early stories has changed over the past two decades. I always liked them but now I like them even more. To give one example, 'Love Far From Home' now strikes me as poignant and wonderful, whereas on my first two readings I regarded it merely as rather good. No, it is much better than that!

But what amazes me is how many of these stories, especially the early ones, were never published at all in Calvino's lifetime (others appeared only in obscure or ephemeral places): perhaps he simply never got round to submitting them anywhere, or maybe he forgot all about them and they were only discovered in manuscript form after his death. These (almost) lost stories include some of my favourites, 'The Man Who Shouted Teresa' and 'Solidarity' (the perfect short fable). Some even lacked titles and had to be given titles posthumously.

The variety seems endless. There are tales that are already polished examples of Calvino's brilliance at playing games with definitions, 'The Lost Regiment' and 'A General in the Library' being two particularly fine examples of how something (a substance, a striving) can alter imperceptibly into something completely different. Other pieces were conceived as political allegories ('Becalmed in the Antilles') or as introductions to books by other writers ('The Call of the Water') or as television scripts ('Henry Ford') or as impossible interviews ('Neanderthal Man' and 'Montezuma').

'World memory' is a science fiction tale written in the 1960s that anticipates the internet. It raises some interesting problems of identity and reality and also happens to be a crime story. Crime fiction was one of Calvino's many literary interests. 'The Burning of the Abominable House' is an OuLiPo story based on the idea of how a computer might write a crime story; it is excellent. 'The Other Eurydice' is a superb fantasy about the underworld. The volume ends with two 'Qfwfq' tales not to be found in the original Cosmicomics collection.

I repeat... one of my favourite short-story collections ever!

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exquisite. This is a lovely book of short stories from Mr C. They cover his career from teenage years onwards. What I like about his work is the purity of the prose, together with a different slant on the world. Especially recommended - the earlier stories, these are magnificent. My favourite was about a man who disrupts a "perfect" society of thieves by being honest.

[Lucrezia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Questa raccolta di racconti di Calvino non mi ha del tutto convinta... Taluni sono autentici picchi di genialità , taluni si sgonfiano sul finale , e taluni sono del tutto scialbi...
Ho comprato questo libro più che altro per il racconto che gli da nome , che è uno di quelli che appartengono alla seconda categoria (i soufflé), perfetto , frasi da brivido , e poi mi ti vai a sgonfiare sul finale mah ... Non so veramente cosa pensare se essere delusa (ma poi c' erano dei racconti magnifici tipo "la pecora nera" o "occhi nemici") oppure esserne soddisfatta (e mi vengono in mente i soufflé o i racconti scialbi ), bah non so che pensare... Ho una ferma convinzione (che solo raramente viene smentita ) e vale a dire che gli scrittori che sanno scrivere racconti belli , ma veramente belli , non passabili o leggibili , no , belli , si rivelano alla fine degli ottimi scrittori, nei romanzi lunghi .... Beh da Calvino direi che non so proprio cosa aspettarmi , ma forse è meglio , l' elemento sorpresa mi è sempre piaciuto...

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

These gather 37 previously uncollected Calvinos, from early fables and realist social commentaries to later oulipan narrative games, stylistically masterful if frivolous riffs on a theme composed as commissions (one from a Japanese whisky company!?), late additions to the Cosmicomics series, a Henry Ford teleplay condensing the contradictions of his philosophy and the era he ushered in, etc. Favorites fell in the later phases: high-concept phenomenological explorations like The Mirror, The Taeget and the Memoirs of Cassanova will stick with me like all the best Calvino.

[Andrew]

These stories range over a pretty broad range of time, from Calvino's largely unremarkable early stories to his glittering later stories, in which he explores the subtlety of perception and plays with applications of scientific concepts to literature in the cleverest of ways (although to be fair, at times it's a bit much, and in some of these stories I get more than ever why Calvino is accused of navel-gazing). Still some of those later stories are on par with his novels, and are very much worth your time after reading a few of those. Oh, and the Henry Ford "interview" story is the brief interview with a hideous man that David Foster Wallace never got around to writing.

[Flavia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un Calvino diverso, non per questo meno bello, ma meno coinvolgente, essendo anche un libro di racconti e non un romanzo.
Alcuni dei testi sono molto belli, in uno ho ritrovato il modo di agire di Sherlock, in altri tematiche moderne per quanto i tempi siano diversi (ma in fondo le problematiche quotidiane sono sempre le stesse).
Altri mi hanno lasciata più perplessa, invece.
In ogni caso, è pur sempre una certezza.

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hit or miss collection of shorts. An amusing sequence of interviews with various persons: Montezuma, a thoughtful troglodyte, Henry Ford, Casanova. Some repeats otherwise with other volumes.

Very effective in some items, such as "The Burning of the Abominable House" and "The Queen's Necklace," which stand out. Others are a bit too clever, but still cool: "The General in the Library," "The Workshop Hen," "Beheading the Heads," and "The Lost Regiment." And extremely moving in others--"Love Far from Home" comes to mind immediately. And "The Other Eurydice" is just very cool--rhetorically slick and conceptually advanced.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short stories are interesting when considered as a medium of their own. What I mean by this is, some authors and fiction writers are better at certain types of fiction. Not necessarily better at certain types of fiction when compared to other writers, but better in comparison to their own works of different types. For instance, Nabokov is a master of the novel (perhaps the best in terms of structure and one of the best in terms of raw prose), but all of his short stories are terrible. There is one about an angel, I think; it's like something I would write. On the other hand, Haruki Murakami excels at the two or three page story, something most other authors do tritely and sardonically.

Calvino is an author who is a master of both the long and short forms. Each of these stories is excellent, as are his novels. This is extremely rare in an author. I think this collection is my second favorite work of his after If On A Winter's Night (which is a masterpiece of its own).

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is mildly disappointing but I think that's largely because Calvino doesn't fare well in short mediums. Sure, sure, novels like "Invisible Cities" are basically little short stories but they're bound together by an overarching theme. And that's one of the great hallmarks of Calvino's novel-writing, the depth and almost mathematical precision of his fiction and this just doesn't translate over quite as ass-kickily (streetwise lit-crit) into shorter works.
And it's not to say there aren't gems here: "The Burning of the Abominable House", "The Other Eurydice"--these especially stand out but the other stories are just sort of weirdly ordinary.
Probably more for the Calvino completist.

[Yehia Nasser · Rating 5 out of 5]

well, italo never failed me
a gripping collection of short stories
to read to calvino is to prepare your mind for difficult intriguing meal

my favorites, (the man who shouted teresa_the flash- good for nothing_conscience-enemy eyes-beheading the heads

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I really love Calvino's novels I think he is at his best when writing short stories. "Conscience" is a particular favorite.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spoiler: This review will not match up with the rating.

Self Disclosure: Italo Calvino is one of my favorite writers. I think of him as my uncle even though we're not related. Not even closely. He's just so great that I've adopted him into my family (in my head--I haven't told the rest of the family about this yet). I vastly prefer his novels to his short fiction...

---We, yes the royal one, interrupt this review to recommend: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, The Baron in the Trees, Invisible Cities, and Marcovaldo.---

The Review-ish Part: Somehow, I found this book such a struggle to get through. It's not even that big of a book, but by the last 70 pages, I started reading the stories from the end of the book going forwards so I wouldn't keep counting how many stories/pages I had left. And yet I liked 11 of these 37 stories immensely. And even the ones I thought were just "good" carry his trademark enthusiasm for life and all its mysteries (Montezuma gets interviewed by a contemporary journalist--incidentally, he seems to think we hindsight stone-throwers have a lot of blood on our hands, too; Henry Ford defends his vision of America; the oft-used celestial presence of Qfwfq gives us a window into the beginning of the universe; etc., etc.). But too many felt like failed experiments... More literary exploration than final pieces. And despite many of the stories being very short, the sheer number of them felt like a hurdle. Of the two sections the book consists of--Fables & Stories 1943-1958, and Tales & Dialogues 1968-1984--I preferred the former, but found the latter stirred more thinking/ideas of my own. And yet I fear my own impatience colored some of the lesser stories.

But why dwell on the lesser? Of the standouts, my favorites were "The Flash" (a story, not even two pages long, of a man who suddenly understands nothing), "Beheading the Heads" (a tale about a town where every politician's time in office knowingly ends with their own beheading--the timing of this is decided upon by the populace), and "The Burning of the Abominable House" (a mystery of sorts that wraps the narrator up in an insurance investigation into the deaths of four victims and the list of heinous deeds they left behind). These gems alone would probably make the book a worthwhile read.

Conclusion: Don't stretch a short book out over 5 months. Don't let your own impatience with life or with wanting to move on to the next book because you want to read almost everything you see distract you from what's in front of you. Get enough sleep--it has a hugely positive impact. Sample some Calvino short fiction, but dive into those novels.

[charta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ogni riga una emozione. Ogni frase una riflessione. Calvino è terribilmente pesante perché obbliga ad essere pensante. Distanza e aspettative auscultate in ogni sfaccettatura.
È in questo silenzio dei circuiti che ti sto parlando. So bene che, quando finalmente le nostre voci riusciranno ad incontrarsi sul filo, ci diremo delle frasi generiche e monche; non è per dirti qualcosa che ti sto chiamando, né perché creda che tu abbia da dirmi qualcosa. Ci telefoniamo perché solo nel chiamarci a lunga distanza, in questo cercarci a tentoni attraverso cavi di rame sepolti, relais ingarbugliati, vorticare di spazzole di selettori intasati, in questo scandagliare il silenzio e attendere il ritorno di un’eco, si perpetua il primo richiamo della lontananza, il grido di quando la prima grande crepa della deriva dei continenti s’è aperta sotto i piedi d’una coppia di esseri umani e gli abissi dell’oceano si sono spalancati a separarli mentre l’uno su una riva e l’altra sull’altra trascinati precipitosamente lontano cercavano col loro grido di tendere un ponte sonoro che ancora li tenesse insieme e che si faceva sempre più flebile finché il rombo delle onde non lo travolgeva senza speranza. Da allora la distanza è l’ordito che regge la trama d’ogni storia d’amore come d’ogni rapporto tra viventi, la distanza che gli uccelli cercano di colmare lanciando nell’aria del mattino le arcate sottili dei loro gorgheggi, così come noi lanciando nelle nervature della terra sventagliate d’impulsi elettrici traducibili in comandi per i sistemi a relais: solo modo che resta agli esseri umani di sapere che si stanno chiamando per il bisogno di chiamarsi e basta.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

"And Ida is one of those girls who run into you and immediately start telling you their life stories and what they think about things, even though they hardly know you: girls with no secrets, except for things that are secrets to them too; and even for those secrets they'll find words, everyday words that sprout effortlessly, as if their thoughts budded ready-clothed in a tissue of words."

"Only in a superficial sense can lies be said to exclude the truth; you will be aware that in many cases lies - the patient's lies to the psychoanalyst, for example - are just as revealing as the truth, if not more so; and the same will be true for those who eventually interpret our message...the lie is the real information we have to pass on."

"She's a nice girl, Mariamirella; by nice I mean she understands the difficult things I say and immediately makes them easy. I'd like to give her a kiss, but then I think that if I kissed her I'd think of kissing the thought of her and she'd think of being kissed by the thought of me, so I do nothing about it."

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calvino's short allegories and invented interviews gain acuity and insight as one proceeds through the collection. Mostly dealing with the intellectual, cultural, and political ramifications of various forms of fascism, Calvino's stories are a warm and engaging rebellion against those forces that would staunch human inventiveness and individuality.

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calvino grew on me gradually as I worked my way through this collection of short stories with a slight mathematical undertone. My favourite was "The Burning of the Abominable House"; the attempted enumeration of all plausible ordered tuples of matchings between the abominable acts with their perpetrators was the height of mathematical silliness.

[DeAnna Knippling · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of weird short stories from a wirter of passionate logic.

Some of these stories were grand; others, merely disciplined. Think Borges or the movie Pi. I liked the stories, but it was almost always a mistake to try to read more than one at a time.

Recommended for fans of the odd, and mathematicians.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of his earlier stories I could have done without, but they did allow for a glimpse into the developing talent of Calvino. The stories written after 1950 tend to be the most beautiful and thought provoking in my opinion.
Calvino is a master of imagination. 4.5*

[Nathaniel Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was impressed by this book's readability and how sincerely entertaining it was. I had girded myself for an academic slog, but Calvino and the translation by Tim Parks were quite engaging.

The early sections were naturally about life in a post WWII world. It was difficult to fully appreciate some of these narratives without a better understanding of Italian post-war culture and politics, but I don't think my ignorance ruined any of the stories. Some of these reflections were quite psychological while others were more social explorations. I can't decide how I feel about his psychological ones. A Flight of Ducks for instance, was quite challenging.

One thing that struck me about these early stories (and a couple of the later ones) was the marked difference in the way he writes male and female characters. In any romantic setting his men are obtuse, contemplative, withdrawn, and either morose or irate. In contrast, the women of his works are all unflappable realists who manage to face all the difficulties which befuddle the men with utter grace. In Love Far From Home, the perspective male goes on and on in his heady way about the errs of the generations and the plague on modern society and relationships. Miramirella with ease unravels his convoluted and self-important strain of thought and turns the subject toward far more piercing social commentary in more straightforward language. At first I wasn't sure if this was intended by Calvino; was he trying to portray women as more effective communicators and deeper thinkers than men? At the end of Memoirs of Casanova, I feel like Calvino confirmed my suspicion that he was critiquing male self-inflated intellectualism. The effect, drawn throughout at least half a dozen stories in this collection, was powerful for me.

The ideas that Calvino play with find no lack of application in the contemporary world for the most part. He seems to have been interested in writing about cutting edge science and technology of his time, but manages to do so without coming across dated by talking about hypotheticals and implications of the knowledge gained. These sections ended up reminding me of a 70s version of Black Mirror. I found the concepts of most enjoyable, but unfortunately some of these stories were the ones falling the most flat delivery-wise. Still, a few of them were a real revelation!

A few of my favorite stories from this collection:
Conscience, where a man goes to war to kill a single hated enemy
The Lost Regiment, where an army is undone by its self-consciousness while parading through a defeated city
Numbers in the Dark, just genius! cleaning kid learns some big company secrets
World Memory, group creates a catalogue of all known human information in anticipation of human extinction
The Burning of the Abominable House, this one was just bizarre and really interesting: insurance investigator vs ai programmer in Death Note-style intellectual battle
The Petrol Pump, the most poetic and beautiful and elegant reflection on modern technology's corruption of the planet
The Last Channel, fascinating in that it is the convergence of all his interests: psychology, sociology, and technology

[dammydoc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Italo Calvino: Prima che tu dica “Pronto”. Mondadori ed.

Di interesse soprattutto perché raccoglie le prime prove di scrittura di Italo Calvino (vedi la sezione Apologhi e Racconti 1943 - 1958), le trame apparse su rivista e non precedentemente edite in volume.
Uno sguardo “a volo d’uccello” sulle narrazioni brevi dello scrittore ligure. Tra le chicche della sua ultima produzione letteraria, le interviste immaginarie a L’uomo di Neanderthal, Montezuma, Henry Ford, la cui chiusura assomiglia ad un intento perseguito lungo tutta una vita: “…volevo la leggerezza, un motore leggero per un veicolo leggero, come il calessino sul quale cercavo inutilmente d'installare una caldaia a vapore...
Ho sempre cercato la leggerezza, la riduzione degli sprechi di materiale, di fatiche... Passavo le giornate chiuso nel capanno della rimessa... Da fuori sentivo arrivare ventate d'odor di fieno... e il fischio del tordo, dal vecchio olmo vicino allo stagno... una farfalla entrava dalla finestra, attratta dal bagliore della caldaia, sbatteva le ali intorno, poi al trepestio dello stantuffo, volava via…”

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I have respect for Calvino, I can't seem to be where he is at any moment. The questions he poses are interesting and productive. The writing is always searching. But something seems to sit on top of all the stories I've read... something that makes my attention constantly wander off the page. Since I've not read some of Calvino's major works, I'm holding out for better things.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the most interesting parts of this collection of short stories, for me, is the chronological organization, which allows us to observe the development of Calvino as a short story writer from the earliest included stories (which start when he was about 20) to the ones written during his 50s and 60s. His earlier stories are brief fables, each spun around a single idea. The first story, "The Man Who Shouted Teresa," for example, explores community through the simple act of a man standing in the street shouting "Teresa" over and over again. In "A General in the Library," a military task force is sent into a library to purge it of all inappropriate works and, through the actions of the wily old librarian, end up on a completely different mission (is it possible to read a short story about libraries without thinking of Borges?).

As Calvino grows older, his stories grow a little longer on average. Most importantly, though, they grow denser. Some of my favorite stories are in the second half of the book, but they are surrounded by too many with which I failed to connect, and while I was able to forgive that when reading what I knew was the work of a young man, I found myself less patient with the older Calvino. One highlight is "World Memory," in which the curator of the world's knowledge instructs his successor in the lesser known aspects of his new duties, with a twist. "The Memoirs of Casanova" (which according to a note from Calvino that is included in the Editor's Note at the end of the book, was based on paintings and was intended to be a sort of Invisible Cities with people, rather than cities) features the legendary Casanova discussing several of his loves, each of whom challenges and exposes him in unexpected ways. Less successful, for me, were three imagined dialogues -- with Neanderthal Man, Montezuma, and Henry Ford. In several of the stories toward the end of the collection, any sense of plot is largely discarded in favor of philosophical musings. I am fairly sure I would have enjoyed these stories at a different time in my life, but at this particular time I failed to connect with them.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Numbers in the Dark, a collection of stories by Italo Calvino, moves from Beckett-like tales focused on vaguely realistic desperate characters, often motivated by the cunning of poverty, to tales that remind one of J.G. Ballard's fantasies absent the superstructure of setting: meditations and loosely-grounded dialogues that strive, it would seem, more toward making a point than resolving a conflict or plot.

Some of these stories have wonderful bite; these would fall into the Beckett category. A man has problems holding onto his hen's eggs in the factory where he works and is permitted to keep her. Two old men wobble to work at the same factory on their bicycles and come upon a double-stranded pearl necklace that, naturally enough, is taken from their grasp. A boy helping his mother on a nightly office-cleaning detail wanders in on the truth of miscalculations that are the questionable foundation of a worldwide business.

The undertone of stories like these is elemental: you can't win...you can't get away...you're being watched...your family never liked you. In other words, these are stories we tell ourselves when we're falling asleep (or have just been fired or have just made a bad investment.)

The stories in the pure fantasy category have a somewhat unconvincing oratorical quality. They display Calvino's ability to drill deeper and deeper into an idea for the fun of it. Even the best of them, however (I'm thinking of "The Other Eurydice," wherein Pluto informs us that life within the earth is much compelling than on its surface) go on too long, are just too tediously inventive. It's possible that they read better in Italian, have more life and energy, but the translation by Tim Parks here seems consistently well-done, so I don't think the original text would greatly enhance their impact.