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Invisible Cities By Italo Calvino & The 99% Invisible City By Roman Mars, Kurt Kohlstedt 2 Books Collection Set
- GenresFiction
Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
5 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
Italo Calvino
560 books9,041 followersItalo 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."
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."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 20, 2025
I can say for certain that I enjoyed the experience, but I cannot in particular tell you what I experienced.
I enjoyed wafting through the different cities, with odalisques and curves and edges and spires and skies and names and signs and living and dead. However, I do not particularly dare to imagine what the overarching purpose here is.
When reading a text like this, there really only is two ways to address what you consumed: you either slip on a big thick round pair of glasses and proclaim that you understand everything, or you toss the book away and complain that the author had no intended purpose, and spat the words out in any arrangement with no thought.
The first chains the writing like a phoenix to a perch, and the second disrespects it.
For Invisible Cities in particular, I think the purposelessness is the purpose, the deconstruction is the structure. It is designed purposely to meander, laid out precisely to be lost in. The coda is the lack of one, and the written experience mirrors and projects onto the reader the feeling of being lost in a thousand cities.
Each city is also meditative. You lose yourself in the wondrous eye of Calvino as he depicts cyclical justice, the reverence for the dead, the conversation between earth and sky. Sometimes he comments briefly on the transience of life, the folly of naming and labelling, and so much more, but all the while he fills you with a sense of immersion and wonder.
I’m sure there is more here, embedded and arranged in veins, but I also trust that I’ll uncover it when the time is right.
I also feel like the sense of “wonders eye” that it espoused kindled in me a desire to have a third eye like that. I hope in my own travels I grow one of my own too.
I enjoyed wafting through the different cities, with odalisques and curves and edges and spires and skies and names and signs and living and dead. However, I do not particularly dare to imagine what the overarching purpose here is.
When reading a text like this, there really only is two ways to address what you consumed: you either slip on a big thick round pair of glasses and proclaim that you understand everything, or you toss the book away and complain that the author had no intended purpose, and spat the words out in any arrangement with no thought.
The first chains the writing like a phoenix to a perch, and the second disrespects it.
For Invisible Cities in particular, I think the purposelessness is the purpose, the deconstruction is the structure. It is designed purposely to meander, laid out precisely to be lost in. The coda is the lack of one, and the written experience mirrors and projects onto the reader the feeling of being lost in a thousand cities.
Each city is also meditative. You lose yourself in the wondrous eye of Calvino as he depicts cyclical justice, the reverence for the dead, the conversation between earth and sky. Sometimes he comments briefly on the transience of life, the folly of naming and labelling, and so much more, but all the while he fills you with a sense of immersion and wonder.
I’m sure there is more here, embedded and arranged in veins, but I also trust that I’ll uncover it when the time is right.
I also feel like the sense of “wonders eye” that it espoused kindled in me a desire to have a third eye like that. I hope in my own travels I grow one of my own too.
February 5, 2021
good book. A nice book to occasionally open and read a chapter, which are often quite short. After reading this book you might begin noticing previously unseen quirks of design embedded in your urban environment.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews