Numbers in the Dark [Paperback]

Italo Calvino (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: New York: Pantheon, 1995 (1995)
• ASIN: B0020BVYDE
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars product of a brilliant mind, July 1, 1999

By 

vic spicer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Numbers in the Dark: And Other Stories (Paperback)

this engaging collection of stories shows calvino's versatility.playfully absurd fables, mind-bending exercises in combinatorics, "interviews" with somewhat deranged historical figures, glaciation interrupting a romantic encounter, an encylopedia of all human knowledge... these ideas and more are all expressed with humor, economy and wonderful style.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, mediocre kindle iPad edition, July 6, 2010

By 

Ferrari Quest (Miami FL) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Numbers in the Dark: And Other Stories (Kindle Edition)

This is a wonderful collection of little gems.

Unfortunately the Kindle to iPad edition is filled with "typos"--- I suppose representing failure of the OCR used to create the file?

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a great intro to Calvino, May 18, 2010

By 

Kurt Conner (South Hadley, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Numbers in the Dark: And Other Stories (Paperback)

Although this collection of short stories had some really nice moments, I was ultimately unimpressed. I had heard great things about Italo Calvino, how he's an Italian version of Borges, and I can certainly see the similarities to the great Argentine author, but Calvino does not benefit from the comparison.

The collection is organized chronologically, as far as I can tell, and it begins with promise. There are a few pedestrian extended jokes and adolescent musings on love, but there are some fascinating fantasy/fables (in one story, a military regiment takes over a library to read every book and determine which ones should be censored, but their involuntary education changes their lives, and in another, a military parade takes a wrong turn and sheds pieces of itself as it winds through a town) and allegories that are impressive when I know the context (I didn't comprehend Becalmed in the Antilles at all until I read the note at the end that reminded me that it was written in, essentially, a Cold War period). No story is "leave you gasping for breath" good, but they're the kind of thing you might read in a high school or college literary magazine from an exceptionally talented student.

As he aged, though, Calvino didn't really live up to the promise of his early stories, as far as I can tell in this collection. His later work is twisted around intellectually complicated but unengaging musings on the romantic journey of water on its way to a shower head or the path a long-distance call takes or a series of "interviews" that made me feel like I was trapped in college in an intro-level philosophy class again. There is a retelling of the Eurydice myth that hints at spectacular imagery but creates such a distance with its inhuman tone that I couldn't even finish it.

I may just not get Calvino. Maybe I need to read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Everyman's Library (Cloth)), his best-known work (in the States), and re-evaluate. But if the rest of his work is fairly characterized by this collection, then I don't understand his appeal.