A brief review of Italo Calvino's first book
Posted at 12:00 on Feb 18th
By Duncan Barlow
I just finished reading The Path to the Nest of Spiders by Italo Calvino. This was Calvino’s first novel and is now my favorite by him. Calvino writes:
Perhaps, finally, your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. This is the one moment where you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then and never again. — June 1964 (Trans. William Weaver)
There is something to this statement. Although I am a fan of Calvino’s work, this book is a compelling book (through style and content) and seems to speak more to the essays on writing that he presented (published as a collection in the book Six Memos for the Next Millennium). Calvino writes:
After forty years of writing fiction…I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language (3).
This lightness is ever present in The Path to the Nest of Spiders. The cityscape and forests feel as if they are held up by chambers of air. He delicately crafts the avenues with precise detail and does not bog the reader down with needless or frivolous details. Calvino provides just enough description to propel the content. He does increase his descriptive language when the environment begins to crowd in upon the characters. Calvino uses this very effectively. For example, Calvino writes:
Pin now lives in a cubby-hold of a room, a sort of kennel beyond a wooden partition, with a high narrow slit of a window, cut sideways through the thick wall of the old house. Beyond it is his sister’s room, from which the light comes in streaks through the cracks in the partition, cracks which make Pin’s eyes squint with the effort to see what’s going on in the rest of the room. Pin has spent hours and hours at those cracks ever since he was a baby, and he’s trained his eyes to be like needle points; he knows everything that happens inside there, though the reasons for it all elude him. When, in the end, he curls up in his little bunk with his arms round his chest, the shadows of the tiny room transform themselves into strange dreams, of bodies chasing each other, hitting and embracing, till something big and hot and unknown happens which paralyses Pin and yet caresses and warms him too…(12)
This paragraph creates its own shadows. It blocks the page and the lines between the sentences become the thin slits of light in Pin’s room. Where most of the language in this book is composed of simple sentences and light words, this paragraph is heavy and suffocating with its long sentences and dark descriptions. Still, with all of its weight, it is still lighter than much of Calvino’s work. Let’s take for example, a paragraph from Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, where he writes:
You have turned up here at a time when those hanging around publishing houses are no longer aspiring poets or novelists, as in the past, would-be poetesses or lady writers; this is the moment (in the history of Western culture) when self-realization on paper is sought not so much by isolated individuals as by collectives: study seminars, working parties, research teams, as if intellectual labor were too dismaying to be faced alone. (96).
One could argue that the language and weight of this sentence represents the sentiment of the claim, but there is something more to it. Although well crafted (as is much of Calvino’s work) it contains a certain weight that his earlier works did not. The Path to the Nest of Spiders has strength in its simplicity, its nakedness. Of course, having spent much of my research time on Franz Kafka, I am not one to shy away from long sentence and page saturating paragraphs. I cannot say that Calvino’s weight gain is less impressive than his younger slimmer self. I appreciate both. The Lack of weight in this book made it a much quicker read and allowed me to read it more casually, which I appreciated in a time of grading mid-terms and mailing out book orders.
Pin, the main character in Nest, is reminiscent of Günter Grass’ Oskar Matzerath (The Tin Drum). A child-like character who, even in his youngest years, possesses an adulterated view of the world. Pin, seeks the comfort of the adult world. He repeats crass jokes, tells dirty secrets about people in his neighborhood, and spends his time in a local bar while his prostitute sister works. He longs for acceptance in the adult world because the neighborhood children flee ostracize him because he is a mouthy tramp. His is a world of rejection and abuse. He eventually steals a gun from a German soldier and falls in with a resistance group, where he finds a home with an unlikely hit man. It’s a heartbreaking, but inspiring story of loss and redemption, filtered mainly through the eyes of a child. There is one moment, however, where the book comes apart. It’s a sudden switch in point of view. Where most of the time the reader follows the world as Pin is exposed to it, one chapter strays and follows two resistance fighters as they walk through the forest. It is, as far as I see it, the only weak link in this otherwise tight and compelling story.
Perhaps, finally, your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. This is the one moment where you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then and never again. — June 1964 (Trans. William Weaver)
There is something to this statement. Although I am a fan of Calvino’s work, this book is a compelling book (through style and content) and seems to speak more to the essays on writing that he presented (published as a collection in the book Six Memos for the Next Millennium). Calvino writes:
After forty years of writing fiction…I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language (3).
This lightness is ever present in The Path to the Nest of Spiders. The cityscape and forests feel as if they are held up by chambers of air. He delicately crafts the avenues with precise detail and does not bog the reader down with needless or frivolous details. Calvino provides just enough description to propel the content. He does increase his descriptive language when the environment begins to crowd in upon the characters. Calvino uses this very effectively. For example, Calvino writes:
Pin now lives in a cubby-hold of a room, a sort of kennel beyond a wooden partition, with a high narrow slit of a window, cut sideways through the thick wall of the old house. Beyond it is his sister’s room, from which the light comes in streaks through the cracks in the partition, cracks which make Pin’s eyes squint with the effort to see what’s going on in the rest of the room. Pin has spent hours and hours at those cracks ever since he was a baby, and he’s trained his eyes to be like needle points; he knows everything that happens inside there, though the reasons for it all elude him. When, in the end, he curls up in his little bunk with his arms round his chest, the shadows of the tiny room transform themselves into strange dreams, of bodies chasing each other, hitting and embracing, till something big and hot and unknown happens which paralyses Pin and yet caresses and warms him too…(12)
This paragraph creates its own shadows. It blocks the page and the lines between the sentences become the thin slits of light in Pin’s room. Where most of the language in this book is composed of simple sentences and light words, this paragraph is heavy and suffocating with its long sentences and dark descriptions. Still, with all of its weight, it is still lighter than much of Calvino’s work. Let’s take for example, a paragraph from Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, where he writes:
You have turned up here at a time when those hanging around publishing houses are no longer aspiring poets or novelists, as in the past, would-be poetesses or lady writers; this is the moment (in the history of Western culture) when self-realization on paper is sought not so much by isolated individuals as by collectives: study seminars, working parties, research teams, as if intellectual labor were too dismaying to be faced alone. (96).
One could argue that the language and weight of this sentence represents the sentiment of the claim, but there is something more to it. Although well crafted (as is much of Calvino’s work) it contains a certain weight that his earlier works did not. The Path to the Nest of Spiders has strength in its simplicity, its nakedness. Of course, having spent much of my research time on Franz Kafka, I am not one to shy away from long sentence and page saturating paragraphs. I cannot say that Calvino’s weight gain is less impressive than his younger slimmer self. I appreciate both. The Lack of weight in this book made it a much quicker read and allowed me to read it more casually, which I appreciated in a time of grading mid-terms and mailing out book orders.
Pin, the main character in Nest, is reminiscent of Günter Grass’ Oskar Matzerath (The Tin Drum). A child-like character who, even in his youngest years, possesses an adulterated view of the world. Pin, seeks the comfort of the adult world. He repeats crass jokes, tells dirty secrets about people in his neighborhood, and spends his time in a local bar while his prostitute sister works. He longs for acceptance in the adult world because the neighborhood children flee ostracize him because he is a mouthy tramp. His is a world of rejection and abuse. He eventually steals a gun from a German soldier and falls in with a resistance group, where he finds a home with an unlikely hit man. It’s a heartbreaking, but inspiring story of loss and redemption, filtered mainly through the eyes of a child. There is one moment, however, where the book comes apart. It’s a sudden switch in point of view. Where most of the time the reader follows the world as Pin is exposed to it, one chapter strays and follows two resistance fighters as they walk through the forest. It is, as far as I see it, the only weak link in this otherwise tight and compelling story.
