Customer Reviews

Under the Jaguar Sun

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I think that these three short stories act as a study on perception and awareness. Each story embodies a sense: In the first story, "Under The Jaguar Sun," Calvino writes about the sense of taste; in the second, "A King Listens," he writes about the sense of hearing; and finally, in "The Name, The Nose," he writes about the olfactory sense. Reading all three in sequence, the stories take on the texture of a novella (Calvino, unfortunately, died before he could complete two more stories of senses).

Each story is entirely different. What I enjoyed about the second story is the Poe-like ("The Pit And The Pendulum") Dostoyevsky-esque ("Notes From The Underground") nature of a King's interior monologue of living as a monarch. The Palace becomes corporeal and the mannerisms of regality become personality traits. But what the king hears takes him into his own thoughts, leading him into an implosion of spirit.

Pick it up if your are a Calvino fan. If not, reading it might be a good way to become a Calvino fan.

A collection of 3 short stories. Each deals with one of the senses and were going to be part of a projected suite with, presumably, some kind of framing device. Calvino was one of those happy people that can write works that stretch the intellect without altogether sacrificing story, plot and characterisation. The middle tale ('A King Listens') is unsuccessful, ending up as nothing more than an experiment - who knows whether it would have improved had he time to revise it, it was the last thing he wrote before his death. But the opening and closing stories are much better, especially the latter ('The Name, The Nose'), although still not prime Calvino (try 'Adam One Afternoon', 'Invisible Cities' or 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' if you're new to the writer and want to know what his talents can *really* produce). 'Under the Jaguar Sun', the title story set in Mexico, deals with taste and develops the idea of human relationships as a form of canibalism in which we digest our partner to taste their thoughts, feelings, desires and wishes in order to make them part of ourselves. 'The Name, The Nose' takes three characters (a Proustian aesthete, a prehistoric apeman on the verge of walking upright and a drug-addled rock musician) that are all in love with an unknown woman identifiable only by her scent, eventually discovering that she has died since making love with them. Despite the differences in the characters, their tales are interlinked surpringly smoothly and satisfyingly. However, due to its posthumous nature, the book is very short, only 83 pages of big type, and so can only be recommended to Calvino fans.

I'm a Calvino mark. Simply said, I love the man's writing! This, however, is a mixed bag, in my opinion. A truly interesting theme (stories about the senses) the only one I really liked was the story dealing with the sense of smell ("The Man, The Nose" I believe.) Its not that the others weren't imaginative or beautifully crafted, but I just felt as if something didn't click for me. The first two tales about the sense of taste and the sense hearing were a little too... self-indulgent, perhaps? It is somewhat difficult to articulate. All in all, this is suitable more for the true Calvino fan, rather than as an introduction or the casual reader. The one lasting impression I drew from the collection was, "What about sight and touch?" Maybe next time around.

As the author's widow explains in the epilogue, Italo Calvino once got it into his head to write a book about the five senses. He dabbled on and off in this project until he died, producing three short stories. With his usual magical delicacy, Calvino explored taste, hearing and smell with a rare skill.

The title story tells of a young couple vacationing in Mexico, where they explore ancient ruins, hear of the history of Oaxaca, and discover new erotic dimensions as they try the local food -- spicy, rich, and almost intoxicating, the food helps link them back to one another.

"A King Listens" is a more experiment story, with no real plot and a second-person narrative ("You are the king; everything you desire is already yours"). A king sits on his throne, alone in a giant hall, alienated from most of his palace and everyone in it. But he hears a woman singing, strange whispers, a prisoner scrabbling against a wall, and much more, which are his roads to the outside world.

"The Name, the Nose" is a tragic tale in the tradition of Poe, but in more lush language. A man danced with a masked lady at a ball, falling madly in love with her -- but he can only identify her by her perfume. He desperately searches a parfumerie for the right scent, thinking of the night when he met her... and is shocked when he discovers where she is, and who the masked figure with her is.

Italo Calvino was obviously a guy who liked to dabble in magical realism, and "theme books" -- tarot cards, magical cities, and the unfolding of the universe. So it's a shame that he never finished "Under the Jaguar Sun." While delightful as a collection, it makes you think of how wonderful "Sight" and "Touch" would have been.

And the way he writes is suitable to each story -- the first is hot and passionate, the second is steady and slightly dull, and the last one is ornate, gothic and blue. Calvino even drops some hints as to what the stories should be about, even when it's obvious; the king in the second story even describes his palace as "all whorls, lobes; it is a great ear." Subtle, huh?

But he can't hold back his natural flair for description in any of these stories. Even though sight isn't explored in this book, we get intricate descriptions of ballrooms, rock orgies, and "a theatre-church, all gold and bright colours, in a dancing and acrobatic baroque, crammed with swirling angels, garlands, panoplies of flowers, shells." His prose can be almost intoxicating.

Calvino's stories about three of the senses are all beautiful, each in a unique, spellbinding way. A must-read for lovers of the magical-realist maestro.

The ear, the smell and the taste (unluckily Calvino died before writing the other two) give place to three incredible stories. After reading this book you will discover that the human organs are more than just that. The senses are not just instruments to go around in life, if we take them to their highest consequenses life appears to be completely different, new, renewed. This book it's a must!!!!

This book collects three of Calvino's last stories, originally planned to be a set of five, each focused on one of the five senses. One of the world's most original and sensitive storytellers, he will be solely missed.

"Under the Jaguar Sun" presents a married couple whose vacation in Mexico is punctuated by the powerful flavors of the local cuisine. Before the trip is over they discover that the spicy food whets their appetite for passion as well as for dining. In "A King Listens" the proud ruler, constrained by the obligations and dangers of his office, finds his only real source of information is his hearing. The ambient sounds of his palace, and the voices inside his own head are all that he can depend on. Finally, "The Name, the Nose" shows us a collage of desperate swains trying to seek out a woman whom they can identify only by her fragrance. As in "Jaguar" Calvino touches on the relationship between the senses and sexual desire, but this tale also carries a different message - one that seems to hint darkly at the author's own coming demise.

For those unfamiliar with the work of this master of postmodern literature, these three stories are probably not the best introduction. The quiet intensity of Calvino's voice is there, and his style is as pristine as ever, almost a prose poetry; but while the stories feature at least a couple of genuine surprises, they fall short of the knockout power that distinguishes his very best work. By focusing so strongly on the senses, he underplays what are probably his greatest strengths - in-depth logical analysis and exquisitely ironic humor. Fans will surely appreciate one last opportunity to experience Calvino's skill, but others should probably start with one of his more revolutionary works if they want to see why he is so greatly admired.

The ear, the smell and the taste (unluckily Calvino died before writing the other two) give place to three incredible stories. After reading this book you will discover that the human organs are more than just that. The senses are not just instruments to go around in life, if we take them to their highest consequenses life appears to be completely different, new, renewed. This book it's a must!!!!

In an afterword note, Esther Calvino asks the reader to think of this book as "not something Calvino started and left unfinished but simply as three stories written in different periods of his life." She gives good advice, but the sense that Calvino had something more, something bigger, planned for these stories pervades this tiny book. He definitely wanted to write a book about the five senses and interweave them in some way (as he did with other themes in previous books). In all of these stories the senses mingle sensuously with desire and sensuality (one can only imagine what he had in mind for the sense of touch). Here sense catalyzes desire, hidden desires, nameless primordial desires. But this book only contains a scratching of a surface, a deep misty lake that promises more. Unfortunately Calvino died before wrapping up the project. So here remains a sketch of what might have been. Sadly, stories published posthumously always seem to have a certain "not quite final draft" feel about them. Here sits another example.

Regardless, plenty of good Calvino exists here for ardent fans of his work. 1982's "Under The Jaguar Sun" is a great story about a couple vacationing in México. Taste awakens forbidden desires (the story begins with a very suggestive description of a "love" between a priest and a nun). The couple explore the ruins of ancient México, the local food (now an amalgam of national cuisines), and each other's bodies and psyches as they rip and tear their lusciously spiced food. But forbidden desires arise once again as they explore the history of human sacrifice and realize that eating mingles deeply with the sensual and the forbidden.

"A King Listens", dated 1984, speaks to the reader in second person (sometimes in a manner similar to "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler"). The king sits on his lonely throne trapped by necessity in his own palace. All he knows of the surroundings are sounds. They reverberate, echo, and thud all around him. Paranoid thoughts about the inevitable usurpation stew with the sounds. Suddenly a woman's voice sings out, but he can only hear her. He wants to experience her as a person, not just a voice. Which leads to one of the best lines in the story: "And so, when a desire to be fulfilled presents itself to you at last, you realize that being king is of no use for anything." The senses again awaken desire.

"The Name, the Nose", from 1972, switches contexts abruptly between a French parfumerie (where the saleswomen erotically encircle the cherished patron), the dank smoky aftermath of a rock concert, and a battle between two early humans (this episode evokes "Cosmicomics"). All of the men in the story come to know a woman only by her smell. The singular smell of each woman ignites desires. Strange ineffable and mad desires. The story itself remains a little indescribable.

So taste, hearing, and smell all get represented here as awakening desire or as a source of desire. And desire weaves through this book like a sinuous thread. It interconnects the stories and provides glimpses of a whole. That is mainly why Esther Calvino's advice remains hard to follow. Something more wants to bubble up from beneath this collection. Because of this, thinking of these stories as three disparate entities poses a stiff challenge. So we're faced with a nagging feeling of incompleteness. Here possibly sits the "lost" or "unfinished" Calvino book. Which inevitably leads to lonely abstract thinking about what Calvino had in mind. And so on...

Still, "Under The Jaguar Sun" will doubtlessly please many Calvino fans. It contains plenty of good, not outstanding, examples of Calvino's work. It also unfortunately leaves behind it a sadness of unfulfilled possibilities. Thankfully Calvino stayed around long enough to write numerous masterworks. This probably would have been another one.

Unfortunately, Calvino died before he could finish this series on the five senses. I wonder what he would have come up with seeing and touching, since each of these three stories are so different and well written. "The man, the nose" are three stories intertwined: a French nobleman who is desperately looking for the woman whose smell so fascinated him at a customs ball; a prehistoric ape-man trying to identify among the tribe the female whose smell captured him; and a British rocker who wakes up after an orgy and copulates with a woman whose smell atrracts him from among the sleeping bodies scattered on the floor.

The second one is "Under the jaguar sun", the story of an erotic encounter between a couple of lovers, as they eat the spicy and exotic food of Oaxaca, in Mexico. The third is "A King listens", the story of an illegitimate ruler whose deposition he acknowledges by the sounds he hears while sitting on his room; an allegory about the fate of dictators.

Very good tales about the senses. Calvino uses his powerful writing to explore items we constantly use but seldom pay much attention to.