A new leaf
In an attempt to get back into the habit of posting (my gorge still rises at the term blogging), I am going to try to do a skidmo -esque chronicle of the books I read over the course of the year. Thusly, we begin with
#1 - The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
This book was a gift from my beloved adopted little sister and sometimes shaman, Sarah Peppers. The upshot is that Cosimo di Rondo, the child of an 18th century Italian noble, decides at the age of twelve that he has had his fill of the 'civilized' world and climbs an oak in the yard vowing to never set foot on ground again. There are enough trees in his village that he can pass from one to the other and eventually into the forest surrounding the town, and he sleeps, hunts, educates himself, and takes lovers in his arboreal home. While there is a fair amount of description of how he adjusts to his life in the trees, it is just as much if not more about how his family and village adjust to his chosen lifestyle. The longer he roosts above the heads of the villagers, the more they come to accept him as a folk hero, and a rallying point for the community. He is much loved by the general populace as he is a noble that is accessible and makes himself useful. They find him no stranger for his arboreus life than any of the rest of the nobility - only a different kind of strange. The book also ruminates on an almost Jung-ian moral that if you do not choose your own madness, some variety of madness will choose you, amply illustrated by the rest of Cosimo's family (possibly excepting Biago, Cosimo's little brother who acts as the narrator) - they are all wildly eccentric in acceptable, societally sanctioned ways, but their idiosyncrasies are their motivating force rather than the result of a conscious choice. The next time I have cause to write a paper on Existentialism I might use this text as the source. Calvino maintains a nice balance between these deeper themes and buoyant, often humorous narrative. Cosimo maintains correspondence with some of the great minds of his time and the reactions he provokes from the likes of Rousseau and Voltaire are pretty amusing. And little dachshund hunting dog, Otto Massimo, is hilarious. The primary romance story was probably my least favorite element of the book - interesting in a fashion, but evoking more pity for those involved than sympathy. I have the sense that this and some of the 'the times, they are a' changing' elements got lost in translation (the book was written in Italian). Like reading Hesse there were times that I could see what he was getting at, but the route he took to get there was foreign enough to pull me out of the narrative. All in all, a damned fine read, I'll probably track down more of Calvino's stuff in the future.
Hmm... I was going to do Alan Moore's The Watchmen tonight too, but seeing as Christine is already snoring softly to my right, that may have to wait until tomorrow. Ta-ta for now.
#1 - The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino
This book was a gift from my beloved adopted little sister and sometimes shaman, Sarah Peppers. The upshot is that Cosimo di Rondo, the child of an 18th century Italian noble, decides at the age of twelve that he has had his fill of the 'civilized' world and climbs an oak in the yard vowing to never set foot on ground again. There are enough trees in his village that he can pass from one to the other and eventually into the forest surrounding the town, and he sleeps, hunts, educates himself, and takes lovers in his arboreal home. While there is a fair amount of description of how he adjusts to his life in the trees, it is just as much if not more about how his family and village adjust to his chosen lifestyle. The longer he roosts above the heads of the villagers, the more they come to accept him as a folk hero, and a rallying point for the community. He is much loved by the general populace as he is a noble that is accessible and makes himself useful. They find him no stranger for his arboreus life than any of the rest of the nobility - only a different kind of strange. The book also ruminates on an almost Jung-ian moral that if you do not choose your own madness, some variety of madness will choose you, amply illustrated by the rest of Cosimo's family (possibly excepting Biago, Cosimo's little brother who acts as the narrator) - they are all wildly eccentric in acceptable, societally sanctioned ways, but their idiosyncrasies are their motivating force rather than the result of a conscious choice. The next time I have cause to write a paper on Existentialism I might use this text as the source. Calvino maintains a nice balance between these deeper themes and buoyant, often humorous narrative. Cosimo maintains correspondence with some of the great minds of his time and the reactions he provokes from the likes of Rousseau and Voltaire are pretty amusing. And little dachshund hunting dog, Otto Massimo, is hilarious. The primary romance story was probably my least favorite element of the book - interesting in a fashion, but evoking more pity for those involved than sympathy. I have the sense that this and some of the 'the times, they are a' changing' elements got lost in translation (the book was written in Italian). Like reading Hesse there were times that I could see what he was getting at, but the route he took to get there was foreign enough to pull me out of the narrative. All in all, a damned fine read, I'll probably track down more of Calvino's stuff in the future.
Hmm... I was going to do Alan Moore's The Watchmen tonight too, but seeing as Christine is already snoring softly to my right, that may have to wait until tomorrow. Ta-ta for now.