Connected short stories that grew on me. The title character is basically a schlemiel, but it's not just about schlemielitude. Calvino surrealism is present. Marcovaldo is a poverty-stricken father of six in poverty-stricken northern Italy in the 1950s-1960s. First living in a basement room and then in a garret, he and his complaining wife and mischievous troublesome children make discoveries and get into pickles and end up on hospital cots or afoul of the law or the landlady. And life goes on to the next story. ( )

I love Calvino so much I want to crawl inside his eyes and live there. I read his books sparingly, because once I've read them all for the first time I'll never get to do it again. This is my yearly ration. Marcovaldo is a lovely foreshadow of invisible cities, stories of how an ordinary person can look at the city and see its thousand ways.
Side thought, I wonder if this wouldn't be a better introduction for people who didn't connect to Invisible Cities.
Side thought two, the snow and the cats alone are worth everything. ( )

Finished this for a second time, though I have dipped into it here and there in the last 10 years in the same way as I dip into poetry. I love this small collection for its whimsy and beautiful sensual descriptions and a sense of dislocation in a setting where everyone usually knows exactly where they are. The brief epigraph/introduction by Calvino places the stories in a specific region and time period of industrial development of northern Italian cities (early 50s to mid 60s), but really the stories feel like timeless meditations on life in a city by someone who would prefer not to live in a city at all. They’re a universal commentary on the transition from “old” urban life to 21st century modernity, and the gradual ungrounding of a sense of place and home. The stories often focus on natural things that aren’t really at home in cities anymore: mushrooms, cows, trees, fish, cats, rabbits, snow, fresh air, the night sky… the poor and disadvantaged. I had forgotten how bizarre and twisted most of the stories are. They often end abruptly, like a moralizing fable, but not always with the message you were expecting.

One more thing: Mariner now publishes Calvino’s oeuvre with visually striking, simple, postmodern designs on largley white covers/boards. They *look* great. However, the physical book SUCKS and is a disservice to Calvino’s legacy. I much prefer the previous generation of his works by Harcourt (for all I know Mariner is an imprint of Harcourt, but I didn’t bother to research it). The binding is better, and the paperback covers are more resistant to dirt and damage, because they are matte glossy, rather than the paper-like covers of Mariner that get stained if you look at them sideways. The pages themselves feel much cheaper in Mariner, and the glue of the spines feels like it’s just waiting to crack. Also, the ink quality is horrendous — this brand new copy of Marcovaldo had vertical streaks throughout the pages, stripes where the ink was not laid down as heavy as the rest of the page, so you have these valleys of faded text that are just ugly and distracting. Shame, Mariner! Shame, Calvino’s estate! Shame!


First read, 1/1/2008:
I feel like a use the adjective "delightful" too much when reminiscing on Calvino, but it's so apt! These stories are quite delightful and different than his stuff in T-Zero and Cosmicomics. ( )

Marcovaldo is an endearing character. Some stories I really dug, some just washed over me. Early Calvino. ( )

I think these whimsical vignettes about the poor but ever-hopeful Marcovaldo are best read, as I did, one at a time over a long period. Like occasionally meeting an old friend on the street and catching up. A nice bedside book. ( )