A few weeks ago, or maybe it was a month ago now, Billy and the kid and I were hanging out in a neighbor’s yard, beside this beautiful gnarled old saucer magnolia. The kid wanted to sit in the tree, and Billy lifted him up to straddle a low branch. At the kid’s insistence, our neighbor climbed up, too, making his way to a higher branch, and sat there a while. He said, “This always reminds me of The Baron in the Trees,” which I hadn’t read. He lent it to me that evening. I’d like to say I read it right away, but I’m still barely fifty pages in. It’s good, and I certainly appreciate it, but I just can’t get into it. It doesn’t demand my attention. Which is a shame. I wanted to love it, because every time I pick it up, I remember a 47-year-old father of two hanging by his knees from a magnolia branch.
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Well, it’s a beautiful image, even if the book didn’t live up to it.
It’s one of my favourite books ever, I remember reading it as a kid when I spent days on a cherry tree in my grandma’s garden and wishing I could be like Cosimo…
Oh, it is worth finishing, at least. It’s my favorite of Calvino’s, if only because it’s the most approachable. Keep us updated on your progress.
I always thought Italo Calvino books ought to be read in the depth of winter. Maybe you should give it another try in December?
What a great moment in time to have captured. Hopefully the book starts living up to your expectations.
I love things about that book, but it is very odd. I love Cosmicomics and If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller more. But Calvino is difficult. He likes to push his readers to extraordinary fits of pique and then draw them back in so smoothly that they forget they were about to throw the book across the room. He’s the magician. We’re the rabbits.
Have you read Six Memos for the Next Millenium? His references are a bit too classical for some readers, but it’s my favorite book of literary theory.