A lonely little book of observations. I most enjoyed the sections "Mr. Palomar On the Beach" and "Mr. Palomar Does the Shopping". ( )

Mr. Palomar sets out to examine every possible aspect of his life and the world around him, trying to name everything and categorise everything scientifically. Of course he fails, and it's in the episodes of life squirming away from his rigid attempts at classification that the absurd humour comes.

The arrangement of the book corresponds to Palomar's classification attempts, being broken up into sections, sub-sections and sub-sub-sections, with each section having three sub-sections and each sub-section having three sub-sub-sections dealing with three different categories of experience. There is no real plot to speak of.

The result, for me, was that although some of the details were beautiful and the descriptions insightful, it felt like notes for a book rather than a book itself. Each sub-section is just two or three pages, and the book itself is little over 100 pages, so no idea seems to get fully developed. You end up with a collection of fragments, each one often quite clever and even entertaining, but not seeming to add up to any kind of meaningful whole. ( )

The first two paragraphs. The context is contemplation or meditation. Mr P is attempting not to contemplate ‘the waves’ but to look at a wave. This is a crucial difference.

Contemplating ‘the waves’ implies a Platonic world view, in which a wave becomes ‘the waves’ or ‘the sea’ through a process of metonomy; and then in which ‘the waves’ become ‘the world’ or ‘time’ through a process of metaphor. Contemplation implies a searching for something eternal, symbolic, meaningful within the ephemera of the world.

Looking at a wave, on the other hand, implies a Buddhist world view, in which the properties of a specific wave are objectively observed by the senses...

Read the full review on The Lectern:

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2009/0...

Mr. Palomar is not a conventional novel but rather a collection of sketches in which we see him on vacation, wandering through the city, visiting the zoo, shopping, meditating. Mr. Palomar is a reflective man, a man given to pondering, to tasks such as examining a wave and wondering if by truly capturing its essence, the world’s complexity can be reduced. He ponders time and illusion. He wishes to cancel his doubting ego in the certitude of a principle. Does he exist? Would the world exist without him? He is overcome by reverence for minute miracles. In a cheese shop he recognizes that it is not a matter of choosing the right cheese, but of being chosen. He tries to improve his relations with the universe and finds the universe “twisted, restless as he is.” He thinks. Finally he “decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies.”

The book is airy and heavy. It is humorous and depressing. It shows joy and the deepest despair. It gives answers which slip, like smoke, through the fingers.

It bears much reexamination and rereading. It is masterful. ( )

For the benefit of those who have read Calvino's Invisible Cities, this book is in some ways very like it, and is some ways quite the opposite. Here various locations, things, and thoughts are described precisely with the utmost eloquence and detail, whereas in Invisible Cities, it is one place being described in many different ways, hazy, as if seen through lenses of different qualities, and warping mirrors. But the effect is much the same, both books give you something to think about, make you see things in different ways, and are a pleasure to read. Both books also contain no strong plot, and consist of many small and diverse sections, and in a way, could be dipped into. Where this book gets very much into the mind of the protagonist, and his fixed, elaborate, and definite interpretations of reality, Invisible Cities is similar in that the recollections are also told from the point of view of the narrator, but differ each time, none being tied to reality, all of them containing aspects of truth found through how you interpret them.
This book is quite short, which will be a dissappointment to Calvino fans, yet they may well expect it. This is an amusing and enjoyable read, though I expect that it would not appeal to everyone. ( )