Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5091 in Books
• Published on: 1978-05-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 165 pages

Amazon.com Review
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.

Review
Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvelous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant. -- Gore Vidal, The New York Review of Books

Language Notes
Text: English, Italian (translation)

Customer Reviews

Reads like poetry
A ruler of an empire so vast he has never seen most of it, and a foreign traveler who describes for him the cities he has visited. The narrative voice is poetic, even nostalgic, and the story derives from a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, a conversation which is interrupted by a series of vignettes describing the many fantastical cities that Marco Polo has seen, dreamed of, or invented. This book does not have a traditional plot, and readers looking for conflict and action will be disappointed. But readers who enjoy nostalgic, dream-like images and prose that reads like poetry will be enchanted by this short book.

Wonderfully Borgesian, with a regrettable dash of Gibran
The descriptions of fantastical dream-cities, which make up the bulk of this book, are wonderful, and I only have one small nit to pick: Calvino, during the mercifully short dialogues between Polo and Khan that book-end each section, tends to become a little too sententious for my liking, subjecting his patient readers to such groaning, sage-like laconicisms as, quote:

Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone-by-stone.
"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks.
"The bridge is not supported by one stone or anther," Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they form."
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds:
"Why do you speak to me of stones? It is only the arch that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."

Unquote.

At its best, Invisible Cities could have been written by the insuperable Borges; at its worst, the insufferable Kahlil Gibran.

for aspiring writers and folks looking for the poetry in the prose
5 stars for brilliance, 3 stars for enjoyment.

The expectation that had been set for me when I added this to my reading list? "This is the book where the city is the story." That said, I was expecting more narrative than what I found here. (Call me a traditionalist but I expect a bit of characterization and plot.) As a "book", I didn't much care for Invisible Cities -- but I would add it to my bookshelf as a good lesson in how to write about places. There is some pretty potent imagery and interesting wordplay at work in here.