Mr. Palomar

Not a novel or short story collection, more the mental fragments of a middle-aged teacher who may or may not think too much. And he may also think a bit incorrectly at times. But his observations of common, everyday objects or ideas were interesting. Either contemplating the thoughts of a visiting lizard, or the emotional chaos of standing in line at a cheese shop and having to choose a particular cheese, Mr. Palomar copes with life by wondering and thinking. Named with a nod to the Palomar Observatory, Mr. Palomar takes time to give the item he is considering a long, detailed look. A series of 27 vignettes, this fictional piece was a lot of fun and I recommend it.

It is always such a pleasure to return to Calvino's beautifully hypnotic introspection. This is such a simple read on the surface, yet I found myself poring over passages multiple times as the layers peeled back to reveal more and more of the world through Mr. Palomar's incredibly observant eyes. Like Marcovaldo before it, Mr. Palomar invites the reader to become submersed in a worldview that most of us have neither the time nor the patience to craft for ourselves. Unlike Marcovaldo, however, this takes a much more philosophical approach to the idea of discovery of Self through observation. Instead of leaving me wistful for a time and place I can never know Mr. Palomar has given me a way to see every facet of my own time and place with a beauty heretofore reserved for the majestic and the surreal.From the opening passages with Mr. Palomar becoming lost in contemplation of the "barely wrinkled" sea, there was no question that this was going to be a thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking experience. Mr. Palomar, of course, "is not lost, because he is quite aware of what he's doing," and so we The Reader are immediately challenged to retain the same mindset as we allow Calvino to lead us to ourselves. In a style that is almost more poetry than prose we are shown how to finally see the world around us as it is, as it was, as it will be, and our own place in it. When the crescendo peaks at just the right moment or my gaze is reflected back to me in just the right set of eyes I can see the world stretch out before me, under me, and behind me with a supernatural clarity. This clarity that seems to only exist in occasions of pure adulation or repose is something that Mr. Palomar fervently and actively seeks at all times by attempting to truly know all things that surround him. The wave on the sand, the feet of the gecko, "the pause and not the whistle" of the crow, the art of charcuterie, or the floor plan of the cheese shop all open new and expansive worlds to be, not just discovered, but known intimately.Yet for all of his observations empirical research, "he distrusts what he knows," and, "what he does not know keeps his spirit in a suspended state." It is this yearning that drives him to not only look but to see. It is this desire that also drives him to frustration. "It is only after you have come to know the surface of things," he says both with joy and sorrow, "that you can venture to seek what is underneath. But the surface of things is inexhaustible." Initially, I felt like this was a collection of unconnected stories; a collection filled with brilliantly deep observations turning the mundane into magic as Mr. Palomar thoroughly scoured the surface of the world for every scrap of knowledge and understanding he could glean. His searching was not, he (and I) would soon realize, simply an exercise but a journey of education and self-realization. The ultimate Truth, for me, came with the understanding that, "a thing is happy to be looked at by other things only when it is convinced that it signifies itself and nothing else." A star is a star, a giraffe a giraffe, and cheese is cheese. These things know what they are, are happy to signify to others what they are, and can truly be observed. People though... we are different, and we must learn to attain this state. Signifying oneself... knowing what you want to signify to others (and yourself) can be terrifying. It may be true that, "good opportunities for keeping quiet are never in short supply," but is the horror of having nothing to say because we are scared to reveal who we are (or want to be) not reason enough to find yourself?How can you truly observe something else when you don't even understand the place from which you are observing? How can you claim to love someone else when you can't love yourself if you are undefined? In the end, "we can know nothing about what is outside us if we overlook ourselves," and no amount of observing will gain us that knowledge. Beautiful though it may be, we cannot spend our lives observing and cataloging that which happens outside of us. If we ever truly see the world through the eyes of Mr. Palomar, we spend all of our time looking... seeing... but none of our time living and becoming. So we rush about and we miss much around us, but we live, we choose, and we live with what we choose... and all of this eventually becomes us. Or, perhaps, we eventually become all of that. But at least we become. We are... and then we were, and the universe will never be the same.

I don't usually like blurbs. I find that they often misrepresent the books that they are supposed to be describing. That said, I don't know that there is any better way to describe Mr. Palomar than "a vision of a world familiar by consensus, fragmented by the burden of individual perception. This books isn't plot driven, or even character driven, so much as it is a book of images, thoughts, moods, and ideas. Contemplative and deliberately paced, Mr. Palomar is different from almost anything else I've read.Mr. Palomar is a series of scenes or vignettes, grouped into three large categories, that are based on things that our main character, the middle-aged Mr. Palomar, sees and thinks about. From the waves on a beach to an albino gorilla in a zoo, from the stars and galaxies to the inner workings of his own mind, Mr. Palomar, like his telescope namesake, is always looking at something, and trying to divine from those individual moments the laws of the universe. Many of his musings are about perception and how we should look at things. Is a cheese shop really a museum of human civilization? What to turtles think about while mating? Is the most important part of speech actually silence? How much can we interpret the past, or physical objects, or other people, without distorting them? These sound like big weighty questions, but Mr. Palomar's thoughts are so rooted in observation and imagery that this book never becomes too abstract or loses its connection with the reader. Instead, it connects with that part of all of us that stays detached, thinking about ourselves and our place in the world.For people who want a books with a plot, I would not recommend this book. Though Mr. Palomar is very relatable in some ways, he is also a very introverted and detached character, and though the entire book is composed of his perceptions, I wouldn't say this is really character-driven novel either. Mr. Palomar is, if nothing else, a novel of mood, images, and thoughts. It is a book that rewards rereading, with shades of meaning and beauty in everything from the overall organization all the way down to individual sentences and word choices. Bathed in the feeling of detachment and isolation so common in modern society, Mr. Palomar is about trying to make sense of the world in which we somehow find ourselves.Rating: 5 starsRecommendation: Read this if you like contemplative novels built on mood, images, and ideas.

This is the first Calvino book I have read other than The Path to the Spiders' Nests and it is a million miles from the gritty realism of that book. This is a book where Mr Palomar describes his observations in the most minute of detail. While Camus veils his observations of the human condition in his storytelling Calvino, in the beginning of Mr Palomar, seems to just be observing…It wasn’t until I got to The Blackbird’s whistle that I actually began to appreciate Calvino’s story telling. If I’m entirely honest I’m not sure if the book improved at this point or I just got into the groove of the Calvino’s writing style.I enjoyed reading Mr Palomar but I’m not sure how good an introduction it is to the style Calvino used for the main body of his work.All in all an enjoyable read and I’m looking forward to my next Calvino book which is the heftier If On A Winter's Night A Traveller

Not one of Calvino's best, but still worth it.

Lovely quiet book that feeds the best part of your brain.

Excellent

An interesting account of Mr Palomar's observations, but not in the league of 'If on a Winter's Night' or 'Invisible Cities'