Rating: 
Summary: Amazing and Incredible!!
Review: To put it simply - I have never read a book like this before. What a fertile imagination!! My awe of Calvino only grows with each 'story'. Totally exhilirating!
I hope readers dont call it "science-fiction", for it is far deeper and more lyrical. My favorites are "A sign in space" and "Without colors". Well, for that matter I like every single one of them. Borgesian in a lot of contexts, this book is a MUST read for everyone.
Truly truly wonderful!!
Rating:
Summary: Imaginative & Original
Review: To read Italo Calvino is a strange and wonderful experience - no literary parallels suggest themselves. He is undoubtedly among the most original, imaginative writers of the 20th century.
Cosmicomics, then, is likely to be a revelation for the uninitiated reader, getting ready to crack the crisp, white cover and dive into its mysterious interior. What we have here is a collection of some twelve short stories tracing the history and evolution of the cosmos.
Each of them begins with a scientific premise - the moon's changing proximity to the Earth, for example, or the Big Bang theory - from which Calvino proceeds to give free rein to his imagination (much to the pleasure of the reader).
A constant guide throughout the itineraries spanning billions of light years is old Qfwfq - a sort of omnipresent cosmic particle, imbued with child-like qualities and always willing to share his quirky observations, romantic misadventures and innermost secrets.
Through the span of the stories Qfwfq confesses the nature of his affectionate tie with the moon, explores the belt of a galaxy, recalls the Universe as it was before its expansion when all of space was condensed into a singularity, the seeing of the first sunrise ever, the agony of being the last existing dinosaur and his never-ending ache for a primordial unity. The characters that are introduced throughout the stories range from a wide ontological array - abstract chemical compositions, brightly colored mollusks, gases and so on. Definitely not a conventional group but with names like (k)yK and Mrs.Vhd Vhd, how could they be?
Cosmicomics teaches its reader while remaining playful. It is at once a work that is surreal, philosophical, humorous and entertaining, without slipping into pretentiousness. The collection is masterfully translated from its original Italian by William Weaver. The writings remains beautiful, lucent and at times, gravity-defying. Calvino succeeds in making the unimaginable accessible to us, so that we can begin, at least mentally, to take leaps that span light-years. The reader should re-discover the awe, the on going `wow' of the universe, happening at this very moment."And at the bottom of each of those eyes I lived, or rather another me lived, one of the images of me, and it encountered the image of her...in that beyond which opens, past the semiliquid sphere of the irises, in the darkness of the pupils, the mirrored hall of the retinas, in our true element which extends without shores, without boundaries." (Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino)
Rating:
Summary: Back to the beginning
Review: To read Italo Calvino is a strange and wonderful experience - no literary parallels suggest themselves. He is undoubtedly among the most original, imaginative writers of the 20th century.
Cosmicomics, then, is likely to be a revelation for the uninitiated reader, getting ready to crack the crisp, white cover and dive into its mysterious interior. What we have here is a collection of some twelve short stories tracing the history and evolution of the cosmos.
Each of them begins with a scientific premise - the moon's changing proximity to the Earth, for example, or the Big Bang theory - from which Calvino proceeds to give free rein to his imagination (much to the pleasure of the reader).
A constant guide throughout the itineraries spanning billions of light years is old Qfwfq - a sort of omnipresent cosmic particle, imbued with child-like qualities and always willing to share his quirky observations, romantic misadventures and innermost secrets.
Through the span of the stories Qfwfq confesses the nature of his affectionate tie with the moon, explores the belt of a galaxy, recalls the Universe as it was before its expansion when all of space was condensed into a singularity, the seeing of the first sunrise ever, the agony of being the last existing dinosaur and his never-ending ache for a primordial unity. The characters that are introduced throughout the stories range from a wide ontological array - abstract chemical compositions, brightly colored mollusks, gases and so on. Definitely not a conventional group but with names like (k)yK and Mrs.Vhd Vhd, how could they be?
Cosmicomics teaches its reader while remaining playful. It is at once a work that is surreal, philosophical, humorous and entertaining, without slipping into pretentiousness. The collection is masterfully translated from its original Italian by William Weaver. The writings remains beautiful, lucent and at times, gravity-defying. Calvino succeeds in making the unimaginable accessible to us, so that we can begin, at least mentally, to take leaps that span light-years. The reader should re-discover the awe, the on going 'wow' of the universe, happening at this very moment. "And at the bottom of each of those eyes I lived, or rather another me lived, one of the images of me, and it encountered the image of her...in that beyond which opens, past the semiliquid sphere of the irises, in the darkness of the pupils, the mirrored hall of the retinas, in our true element which extends without shores, without boundaries." (Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino)
Rating:
Summary: None other can compare
Review: When I read Difficult Loves, I was impressed. I recommended it as the collection to read if you never read anything else in your life. Cosmicomics, however, has actually inspired me to stop reading for a time. It is the perfect set of short stories. There is no point in reading anything else.
|
