Customer Reviews

The Road to San Giovanni

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Hmmm, reading the editorial reviews, I had to wonder if it might be time to go back and read this one again. As I consumate Calvino fan, I have to say I was completely dissapointed by the title essay the editors are raving about here; the one about Calvino's old-school agragarian father trying to spark cinema-going Calvino's interest in hauling veggies. The same story is told under the guise of fiction in Difficult Loves under the title of Lazy Sons, and, in my opinion, it was ten times better. I never thought I'd say it, but I was bored. Bored reading Calvino? Can you imagine? Neither could I. The other four essays were delightful and charming. (Personally I was rather fond of the one about the trash.) The writing/memory excercizes reminded me of work that Calvino's long-time friend George Perec put forth in Species of Spaces. They made me think, or rethink, or be intentional about thinking about, memory and space and existence. That's the sort of thing I want and expect from Calvino. Maybe I'm just sulking about that first essay, but I wanted something better, something more like the other essays there. Maybe, since this book was a compilation of Calvino's unpublished work that was printed posthumasly it was merely and editing mistake that allowed such disparate pieces to appear together. Maybe I would have liked that title essay better on it's own. I dunno. While I certainly wouldn't say don't read The Road to San Giovanni, I might caution Calvino fans to let go of some of their expectations before delving in.

This collections starts off with a bang--the title essay BLEW ME AWAY. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, subsequent essays shrivled in it's shadow. I crapped out before finishing the whole book, second to last essay I think, the one about garbage. If you buy this, do yourself a favor--read it backwards. Probably the way it should have been organized in the first place. If you don't buy this book, do yourself a favor--find the title essay somewhere else.

The deprecated article on garbage is absolutely one of my favorites and a reason that I include this book on my short list of memorable books, even ahead of Invisible Cities or Six Memos for the Next Millennium! To each his own, I guess.