Mr.Palomar (Picador Books)

by Italo Calvino

book data

715 ratings, 3.86 average rating, 35 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		28%
4		37%
3		27%
2		5%
1		1%

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published

June 6th 1986 by Macmillan Education Australia (first published 1983)

details

Paperback, 124 pages

isbn

0330290924 (isbn13: 9780330290920)

description

Here, Calvino, probably Italy's leading novelist before he died, focuses a probing eye on one man's attempt to name the parts of his universe, almost …more

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Aug 25, 2008

Alex Teplitzky rated it:

(review of isbn 0156627809)

Read in October, 2008

Every time I pick up an Italo Calvino book I am torn between two poles: on one hand, I am initially intensely disinterested: how to get involved in a book that has no overarching plot? But on the other hand, Calvino chooses his words so carefully and wisely that not one sentence seems superfluous. His love of lists for example seems to parallel the mind thinks. And, provided I give him a chance, my mind begins to think that Calvino is some kind of god who has the blue-prints to the human cond...more

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Aug 31, 2009

David rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in August, 2009

Mr. Palomar is "a nervous man who lives in a frenzied and congested world...and to defend himself against the general neurasthenia...tries to keep his sensations under control insofar as possible." The book is a series of short pieces that narrate Palomar's attempt to carefully observe his world, to screen out distractions in order to get a clear view of things. He begins by focusing on surfaces, but has trouble getting beyond them: "it's only after you have come to know the surfa...more

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Apr 13, 2009

Andrew rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in January, 2008

Mr. Palomar sets out to examine every possible aspect of his life and the world around him, trying to name everything and categorise everything scientifically. Of course he fails, and it's in the episodes of life squirming away from his rigid attempts at classification that the absurd humour comes.

The arrangement of the book corresponds to Palomar's classification attempts, being broken up into sections, sub-sections and sub-sub-sections, with each section having three sub-sections ...more

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Jan 10, 2009

Michael Mejia rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in January, 2009

I've always loved the idea of Calvino, his books of ideas, the idea of the book in Calvino, though I've not always loved everything of his. This is a great one. I mean, there is a plot in the sense that one's life is a plot, that the evolution of Mr. Palomar's thinking is a plot. Not that plot matters much to me. Palomar is less a character than a sequence of systems of thought, subtle differentiations between them, always leaning toward the balancing of the visible and invisible, the finite and...more

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Jun 22, 2009

Harish Venkatesan rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in July, 2009

This novel (can't really call it that, more like a collection of musings) reminded me why I love calvino's work- beautiful prose (intricate but light; carefully chosen words), interesting premise (a man's quest to find the Absolute by observing principles at work in the mundane world around him), and full of insight. Planning to go through it again to savor some of the observations.

at the butcher's:
"The elaborate and greedy order that he intended to make momentarily slips...more

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Dec 19, 2008

Shawn rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in January, 2009

Another excellent book by Calvino. I think it should get 4-1/4 stars or so. The book is about a guy, Mr Palomar, who waxes philosophic on a number of different topics, but it's the arrangement of the book that's the key (besides the excellent writing). The book is separated into 3 main sections, each with 3 subsection. Each subsections has 3 stories. Each story/subsection/section is arranged so that the first one is descriptive, the second one is narrative, and the third one is meditative. ...more

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Jan 23, 2009

baggyparagraphs rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in January, 2009

This novel by Italo Calvino is barely a novel, with only the title character and no plot. Susan says she knows of a movie version, but even Calvino, with his prodigious imagination, probably couldn’t imagine selling screen rights to a story like this. Mr. Palomar mainly gazes and sometimes just ponders. He is anxious and withdrawn and avoids interacting with other people. Instead, he devotes himself to trying to quantify the unquantifiable, to deterimine the infinite from the finite.

...more This novel by Italo Calvino is barely a novel, with only the title character and no plot. Susan says she knows of a movie version, but even Calvino, with his prodigious imagination, probably couldn’t imagine selling screen rights to a story like this. Mr. Palomar mainly gazes and sometimes just ponders. He is anxious and withdrawn and avoids interacting with other people. Instead, he devotes himself to trying to quantify the unquantifiable, to deterimine the infinite from the finite.

In the opening chapter, Mr. Palomar stands on a tongue of sand at the edge of the sea, reading the waves. He tries to see a single wave all the way to its end but finds himself distracted by complications. Waves inconveniently run into each other, foam mixes up the picture, the surge carries onto the beach and disappears. He watches until the waves seem to run backward from the shore. Is he trying to “make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits?” Can he extrapolate what he learns to the entire universe? No, he can’t, for he is tense and nervous and loses patience and goes away “even more unsure about everything.”

The effect is comical. In fact, “Mr. Palomar” is a metaphysical cartoon. It marches along beside Calvino’s “Cosmicomics.” We follow Mr. Palomar along the beach as he tries to find the proper way of passing a topless sunbather. Should he stare into the void? Look straight ahead and take in her presence as part of the whole scene? Neutrally glance at her? Stare at her boobs? On his fourth pass, when the sunbather should be feeling reassured that his intentions are just right, she jumps up, covering herself, and runs away. “The dead weight of an intolerant tradition prevents anyone’s properly understanding the most enlightened intentions, Palomar bitterly concludes.”

A recurring idea is that if only the ego could be “canceled,” he could see without impediment. If only he could drop the cultural messages that have accumulated! He listens to a blackbird, which proves overwhelming. Close scrutiny of his lawn reveals a “lawless jungle.” (This fits with my assessment of my own lawn as a miscellaneous collection of plants.) Turning from “that place of superfluous complications and confused approximations”—namely, the earth—he looks at the moon, the planets, the stars, finding they’re just the opposite of the luminous impressions he sees upon closing his eyelids. Back in Rome on his terrace, he loses himself in details that are discernible in the surrounding rooftops and concludes that surfaces are “inexhaustible.”

The best part is when he does the shopping and stands in line at a cheese counter. He would like to “establish the simplicity of a direct physical relationship between man and cheese” but instead finds himself suffused with cheesy concepts and histories. He can imagine the salty brine in a seaside pasture, which affected the flavor of one cheese, whereas the next was partly flavored by dry winds of another region. When it’s time to order, he crumbles before “a young cheese-girl, dressed in pink” and selects some disappointingly ordinary cheeses. Later he finds himself wearing a pair of mismatched slippers, sold at an eastern bazaar. He concocts a scenario in which someone else got the other odd slipper. It would all even out in the end, except that the other odd slipper might have been sold centuries ago (the merchant goes on forever in the bazaar) and the symmetry is extended across centuries.

Finally he goes mute. “Good opportunities for keeping quiet are never in short supply.” He has no real authority to speak, and the model he devises for dealing with the world works better as the model for other models. Insignificant objects beg to be minutely observed, and he tries to comprehend the seashell, the leaf, while also being mindful of astronomical reality, the supernova in a distant galaxy. This same serene approach could be applied to humanity, his neighbors, if only they would cooperate and quit elbowing their way through the world.

At last he decides to act dead and see how the world does without him. “For some while he has realized that things between him and the world are no longer proceeding as they used to…” But being dead isn’t so easy—not even for one as feckless as Mr. Palomar. Being dead must be distinguished from not being, for one thing, and it doesn’t seem to lead to the end of his anxiety. His observations continue but it’s a difficult adjustment as he finds himself trapped in his own ambiguous history. Anyway, if you left behind a genetic heritage, you’re not exactly dead. And even an idiot creates a historical heritage that is perpetuated “in the memory and language of those who go on living…” The ending of the human race will merely postpone its absolute extinction, as “the memory…is reborn from its ashes and is spread through the inhabited zones of the universe.” Ultimately, though, this memory will crystallize. And then time will end. Mr. Palomar decides to prepare by describing each moment of his life, which will expand infinitely, and “until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies.”
(less)

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Jun 10, 2009

Matt is currently reading it (review of isbn 0099430878)

bookshelves: currently-reading

I picked this up and found the first chapter intriguing. It seemed to promise a modern philosophical novel. The second chapter was hillarious. Sounds good, but then I ground to a halt. There was something a little thin about the drama and, perhaps, the philosophy. I realize that I haven't given this one much of a chance yet, so I plan on returning to it as the mood strikes me. It is short, so a couple of philosophical hours should do the trick.

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Jan 25, 2010

Garrett rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in February, 2010

"Mr. Palomar" isn't really about anything. It's a short book comprising a series of observations and reflections from the titular character. Mr. Palomar visits the zoo, the beach, the market, and in each setting his mind wanders. He thinks in circles until he reaches some preposterous conclusion about how the world functions. In other words, it's pure Italo Calvino: wit, wisdom, and nonsense at once. As with several Calvino books, William Weaver is the translator here, and again he dem...more

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Oct 04, 2009

thom rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in October, 2009

Another intriguing book by Calvino. I doubt it's quite up everyone's street, but as a philosophy student, this book's elegant and acrobatic leaps of logic and investigations into everyday life are wonderful.

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Mar 02, 2009

Trent added it (review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in February, 2009

More of a series of philosophical musings (they're too short to be essays) than a novel. If I read this before "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler...," I might never have read another book by Calvino

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Jun 24, 2009

Ellie marked it as to-read (review of isbn 0099430878)

bookshelves: to-read

I started this book on a short visit in Brooklyn. The first several stories were satisfyingly simple- once I finish my participation in the "Infinite Summer" reading group, I'll get back to it.

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Dec 04, 2009

Bill rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

bookshelves: fiction, lit-fiction

Read in December, 2009

Although this book is classified as fiction, it hardly qualifies as a novel, as there is very little plot involved. Some very beautiful writing though. His description of a gecko is amazingly sublime.

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Dec 06, 2008

Gina added it (review of isbn 0099430878)

bookshelves: own

I haven't read this one for a while, so I think I'm going to have to read it again. I didn't really understand much of what was going on the first time I read it...

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Mar 28, 2009

Jeff rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in March, 2009

A short book; more of a compilation of very detailed observations and musings about life. Interesting and engaging.

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Dec 26, 2007

Bob rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in December, 2007

Describes a man almost overwhelmed by his attempts not to live an unexamined life - his abstract notions about how to be a better, more fulfilled person tend to suffer from how annoying actual other people are. One of the most engaging chapters is on a visit to a cheese shop - with an undercurrent of commentary on the difficulty of almost unlimited choice in consumer culture, Mr. Palomar nonetheless thinks through a delighted rhapsody of appreciation for natural and agricultural diversity and bo...more

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Jul 25, 2007

Andrew Bailey rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

recommends it for: high social monitors

not as good as his other work, but worth reading. especially if you contemplate your every move. hey. don't close this review without considering the consequences.

mr. palomar happens to consider everything. while walking upon the shores of italy he finds a topless woman sun bathing (as all women in italy do). he thinks: should i look away and be seen as polite? but if i look away, will she think i find her repulsive? okay. maybe a small stare. but not long enough to seem lecherous....more

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May 14, 2009

Ronny rated it:

(review of isbn 0151628351)

bookshelves: koleksi-langka, sastra-italia

Read in January, 2000

pisau bedah yang sangat dingin dalam membongkar kehidupan

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Apr 10, 2009

Lazarus P Badpenny Esq rated it:

(review of isbn 0749398000)

bookshelves: 2009, a-walk-in-the-metafictional-woods, europa, italy, stories, twentieth-century

Read in September, 2009

The eponymous Mr Palomar, much like his namesake telescope, trains the lens of his mind's eye directly at the particularities of his Universe whether it be listening to the birds in his garden or buying cheese from his local Fromagerie, visiting the zoo or spending a day at the beach; the complex, semiotic Eco-system (Umberto, that is) in which everything is a sign: a world doubled-up and doubled-over in metaphysical doubt. Reads rather like being inside the head of Barthes on summer break.

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Oct 01, 2008

Bria rated it:

(review of isbn 0099430878)

Read in October, 2008

I have done both myself and Calvino a disservice by reading this book when I was of absolutely no mind to appreciate it in the slightest. It seemed insighful and thoughful and charming enough, but I could only apply my mind to the very last section, 'Learning to be dead', which, incidentally, is what I am doing at the moment. Unfortunately, that section was largely unsatisfying re: my current predicament. I am not sure it will help me to learn to be dead.

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