marcovaldo by italo calvino

Finished yet another book that made me give thanks for my ability to read...this time the award goes to Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city.

It's a must read. A collection of twenty short stories, each is set in a consecutive season in a small town of northern Italy. They follow a poor laborer named Marcovaldo who has an eye for the fantastic and a disdain for his surroundings. There are fantastical touches, like a plane bound for India accidentally boarded, a breath that clears a yard of snow, a plant with an astounding rate of growth...but this book doesn't ask you to confirm it as factual, but merely to enjoy it.

The book is divided by a decade or so down the middle, and the first half is set in the poorer yet more innocent Italy of the 50s while the second deals with the illusions of prosperity in the 60s. Of course, it's not nearly as didactic as it sounds...these exterior facts are not explicitly stated, but merely offer a bit more explanation as to what the characters go through.

Furthermore, the book is divided into self-contained chapters, each bearing a title and a label of either Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter. In a reflection of the interconnectedness of life and the way days and years often unfold, Calvino weaves shadows of the previous season into the most recent. In the first tale, Marcovaldo finds mushrooms sprouting up in the cracks of the city. Although he tries to hoard them for himself, everyone finds out and gathers them up....and the whole town ends up in the hospital. Three stories later, next Spring finds Marcovaldo treating his fellow citizens for rheumatism using wasp stings, which goes awry with a huge wasp attack. The following Spring's story opens with a doctor prescribing a some good air as treatment for Marcovaldo's children, and they end up in the countryside on the grounds of a sanitorium. These little threads he weaves attaching each story make a cohesive unit of the collection.