Difficult Loves

by Italo Calvino, William Weaver (Translator), Ann Goldstein (Translator)

"The quirkiness and the grace of the writing, the originality of the imagination at work, the incandescence of vision, make this collection well worth reading." —Margaret Atwood

A dazzling early story collection from Italo Calvino about love and the difficulty of communication

In Difficult Loves, Italy’s master storyteller weaves tales in which cherished deceptions and illusions of love—including self-love—are swept away in magical instants of recognition. A soldier is reduced to quivering fear by the presence of a full-figured woman in his train compartment; a young clerk leaves a lady’s bed at dawn; a young woman is isolated from bathers on a beach by the loss of her bikini bottom. Each of them discovers hidden truths beneath the surface of everyday life. Translated by the acclaimed Ann Goldstein (translator of Elena Ferrante's The Neapolitan Quartet) this collection displays Calvino at the start of his prolific career, the groundwork for the [Description cut off by publisher]

Contents:
Difficult Loves
The Adventure of a Soldier
The Adventure of a Crook
The Adventure of a Bather
The Adventure of a Clerk
The Adventure of a Photographer
The Adventure of a Traveler
The Adventure of a Reader
The Adventure of a Nearsighted Man
The Adventure of a Wife
The Adventure of the Married Couple
The Adventure of a Poet
The Adventure of a Skier
The Adventure of a Motorist
Difficult Lives
The Argentine Ant
Smog

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Italy, Literature, Italian Literature, Literary Fiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published August 29, 2017

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

[Lauren Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really disappointed with this one. Two stars because I enjoy Calvino's prose, but overall I couldn't get past the gross descriptions of women in these stories. I own Cosmicomics, so hopefully that one is better...
On a more superficial note, it's awfully too bad because I was considering buying more of Calvino's works since Mariner rereleased them with such gorgeous covers, but I think I'm gonna skip doing that now!

[bedheaded · Rating 3 out of 5]

The majority of the inclusions in this collection seem utilitarian in design, briskly conveying their concepts and points whilst forgoing aesthetics. It makes "Difficult Loves" an easy read, but not a particularly rewarding one. The clear stand-out is 'Smog,' which recency bias compels me to compare to Sartre's "Nausea," and which spends a great deal of time coloring its world and characters. That it's the longest story in this collection (taking up almost a quarter of the whole book) leads me to believe that Calvino is more effective the longer his stories are.

[priwithap · Rating 2 out of 5]

this was a bit difficult to love

[chewish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Puts into words feelings I would otherwise never be able to articulate. Good book!

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5

Perhaps I should've started with a novel by Calvino instead of this short story collection. Regardless of format, I felt that there was so much misogyny present in these stories. I know Calvino was born in the 20s, and died in the 80s, so at the time maybe this subject wasn't addressed or critiqued as much but it didn't age well in that regard.

I also felt that the translation was odd. Or, I'm assuming its the translation. The sentence structures felt clunky and after looking through another one of his books translated by the same person, I feel as if the translator botched the English translation into oddly segmented sentences. I'm not sure though... I don't speak Italian and couldn't read this in its original language.

[Abby Edgecumbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

These short stories were something else. They were all about love in a peripheral sense, and mostly dealt with hypotheticals and love of transient and ephemeral things. The impression of a stranger woman on the train, the form of a lovers body swimming in the sea, concealed but exposed, and how we cling to the familiar when threatened by even the most base attackers, and how those attacks can reveal beauty but also shocking mundanity in those that we love. Overall I enjoyed it, Calvino drew intimate portraits that showed how clinical love can be.

[Susannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Struggled through this and finally gave up at Part II because it was so boring. I wish I'd read Invisible Cities as my first Calvino instead of this, now it will probably be a while before I pick up anything else by him.

[Nada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great, not terrible.

I love Calvino's style and that mythological, folk tale quality of his writing. It somehow lets me down that in his realist stories that this promise of magic and myth remains unfulfilled.

[Kyle Crawley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best Calvino, but still decent. I would probably recommend other works over this one.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I had read italo calvino before but I had not. found at my mother's house over the holidays. this one was short stories, i did really like the ones about kids, i think the love stories were my least favorite although the near sighted man did make me feel sad and i was also surprised that there were so many naked women in it, and casual sex, but honestly i thought it was much older than it was, it was published in 1970. i liked the descriptions of landscapes and how people feel in the world. the war stories were the most affecting for me. and the poverty and sadness.

[Angela HS · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calvino offers glimpses into the lives into a cast of characters in “Difficult Loves,” exploring the nuances of different types of relationships. Stories run the gamut from a soldier cozying up to a widow on a train to a husband and wife who work opposite shifts to a woman who feels trapped in the ocean when she loses her bikini bottoms.

You never know what situation you’ll encounter next, but you do know that you’ll find observations that are on point and snapshots of life that ring true.

[OG · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book was sooo hard to get into but the second half of stories really takes off, ( or I grew accustomed to his delicate observational voice and subtle way of looking at how big the smallest and most ordinary are (the ants!! My favorite)

[Doug Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average three stars but a few four star gems in among these stories.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valentine's Day is in just three days, and I feel like I could write a love poem for Italo Calvino's writing. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." I swear I didn't time my reading of this particular set of short stories to fall so close to the commercialised day for love. It just happened to work out that way.

I have only read two of Calvino's other work before this, and those I both read twice before I stumbled upon this lovely collection - which I had hithertofore never known about (my acquaintance with the works of writers that I like is not cultivated using any particularly systematic method - it's all rather ad hoc). Considering that each book I've read has been so markedly different from the others (in structure and in content), it's something to marvel at that they should all be equally enjoyable, though I do have a favourite so far.

Anyway, this collection was such a joy to read. Each story, I believe, was written at a different time, but they were all written after WWII. This particular edition is comprised of two sections - Difficult Loves and Difficult Lives. The former is, predictably, about various romantic encounters. They're quite whimsical in nature: lovely little snapshots of the lives of various people of various classes in post-War Italy, as seen through the lenses of love. The latter has elements of romance, but they are much more dystopian and sort of Kafkaesque. I found it to be a rather jarring juxtaposition. Nevertheless, each story stood out so intensely after each read, and I know that, like all his other work that I have read so far, I will be revisiting this book again sometime in the relatively near future.

[Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

*decided to do all-around Italo Calvino for the month of August

I’ve always been fascinated by Calvino as a person. An atheist grew up in Italy with both parents being scientists, spent majority of his life active in the Italian Communist Party and completed his master of literature’s thesis on Joseph Conrad - this combination just seems too surreal. He is often considered one of the most iconic post-modernist writer of his era; yet to me, he is THE true neorealist artist trapped in the writers' crowd.

This is my 3rd Calvino read after “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” and “Invisible Cities” - with both of these novels being his late work, Difficult Love is my first take on his early writings.

The book consists of 11 short stories that are often beautiful and poetic, at times violent and melancholic, often laugh-out-loud funny, and always insightful (even if it's in a way you can't precisely wrap your brain around). I enjoyed the characters and extensive sceneries Calvino created. He gracefully unearths the most complicated emotions buried deep inside human beings and talks about loves that are difficult to embrace in the world driven by conventions and morals.

Calvino can flat out just write - anyone who loves literature can see that immediately - but majority of the stories ended in a disjointed manner with no resolution and often left readers with unconditional imaginations. I often found myself wanting to say aloud, "So.. what's your point, Italo?"

*next read will be the autobiography of Calvino, "Hermit in Paris", as I am dying to get into his actual life experience and freakish brain.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 = Liked it.

Pretty good collection of short stories, although with the sheer number of stories some were clearly better than others. Calvino is a great writer, so nothing ever warranted a skip, but I definitely found the stories at the start of the collection (thematically based on young men in the mountains) to be weaker than the latter stories (thematically based on love (hence the title)).

My personal favourite was the 'The Adventure of a Photographer', a beautiful story on the power of the image:

'The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow… The minute you start saying something, “Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!” you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness.'

I also quite liked the two beach stories: the first about a man who is so obsessed with reading that he ignores a beautiful woman, and the second about a woman who is trapped while swimming because her swimmers fall off in the water.

A solid read of interesting and sometimes thought-provoking stories.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bather— “Sognira Isotta recalled that even when she was alone or in private with her husband she had always surrounded her being naked with an air of complicity … as if she were temporarily putting on joyous but outrageous disguises”

A clerk— “he preferred to convince himself it was too late, because he was seized by the fear that his house, the repetition of daily acts, would dispel the rich and extraordinary atmosphere in which he now moved”

A photographer— “the moment the scansion of the frames is insinuated between your acts, it is no longer the pleasure of the game that motivates you but rather that of seeing yourselves again in the future”

A wife— “Stefania’s presence seemed to make him suspect that his whole attitude was mistaken, that perhaps happiness was something different from what he was seeking”

A poet— “Nothing that was there at this moment could be translated into anything else, perhaps not even a memory”

A motorist— “That’s why, rather than continue to talk, I felt the need to transform the things to say into a cone of light launched at a hundred and forty kilometers an hour, to transform myself into this cone of light moving along the highways, because certainly a signal like that can be received and understood by her without getting lost in the ambiguous disorder of secondary vibrations … What counts is to communicate the indispensable, leaving aside the superfluous, to reduce ourselves to essential communication, to a luminous signal that moves in a given direction, abolishing the complexity of our persons and situations and facial expressions”

[Sofie · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the "Loves" section, the first and last were stellar. The first, the touch of one calf with another in a train carriage: how satisfying to follow the adventure of a soldier's hand, hilarious in the narrative's extreme detail. And the last, "The Adventures of a Motorist": this is what I came here for (and what you should too!) The lot in the middle: many were too alike (a man's detailed speculations, oftentimes sexist) and sometimes even uninteresting in themselves.
In the "Lives" section, everything (everything!) covered in ants and then dust, respectively. But both the dust and the ants are forgettable.

[Megan Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is delightful. In addition to eloquently expressing the most nuanced of emotions, Calvino manages to capture the Italian ambiance i remember from when I visited in 2018.

I read DIFFICULT LOVES slowly over months, giving me time between each story to really think about each richly layered story. Overall, it’s slightly uneven—some stories are much less compelling than others. But, the great ones, really struck me and stuck with me. I’m definitely going to check out more of his work.

[Hunan Rostomyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting stories. Like Marcovaldo, but covering different characters and situations.

Like Borges, Calvino thinks on paper. You get a sense that a story can be told without stylistic flourish (not to say that he’s got no style; style isn’t what stands out).

[Seb Swann · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like collections of short stories; intimate, engrossing, and lively, Calvino has an uncanny ability to suck you into a story not matter how brief and portray relatable situations with a gentle yet perspective touch.

[Rahiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful prose but at times, it felt like Calvino’s attempt at understanding and exploring complex human behaviour or relationships was sometimes overshadowed by its overplayed absurdity. Overall - fascinating, deeply disturbing and lovely !

[Taylor Stark · Rating 4 out of 5]

First grouping of stories was 2.5 stars, but the final two stories (The Argentine Ant and Smog) were both easily 5.

[Ralischen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 stars

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part I, 5 stars. Part II, 3 stars.

[Emma Crosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful collection of stories highlighting different forms of love. If there’s one this Calvino is gonna do it’s deliver great storytelling

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grouping these stories together really made it noticeable how similar they are in structure and line, which unfortunately did a disservice to the individual stories themselves.

[Lyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very true and charming, 4.5.

[Betty-Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

A master storyteller.

[tri · Rating 4 out of 5]

highly recommend reading this while listening to piero piccioni