Moreover, when I began to look at the book as a whole, and the cities collectively, the lines between the different places began to blur. All the cities started to feel the same. Having finished the book I cannot honestly name or describe one single city from it; however, I could easily describe one huge city, made up of parts of the little ones Polo described. But I think this was the authors point. He wanted to make the reader feel like he was reading about one city because if you were to travel across this country to each and every one of these cities, they would all begin to feel the same and blur together. Polo describes this sensation as he reveals, "Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents," (137 Roth). So although I look back on the book as a kind of really long description of one city and my memory is a little fogged about the details, I think Roth achieved his goal. He took me on a journey through countless beautiful cities and the deeper I went the more I saw them all as the same.
Monday, July 25, 2011
When I first started reading Invisible Cities I didn't think I was going to like it or enjoy reading it at all for that matter. I found myself constantly questioning what the point of the book was, endlessly asking myself: so what? As I continued to read and absorbed countless descriptions of countless cities I began to appreciate on both a smaller and a bigger level. I looked at the stories individually and appreciated the interesting and often unorthodox descriptions. I allowed myself to smile at peculiar or bizarre occurrences that could only happen in cities. I began to see cities I have visited in the ones Philip Roth described.
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Wow Mary, I completely agree! I actually went to Europe this summer and went to Venice where I saw Marco Polo's house! But traveling to Venice and taking a gondola ride through the canals reminded me much of this book. I feel that all the cities are connected in the same way that the canals are connected in Venice. Each canal takes you on a different path, but yet they are all intertwined and apart of one another by the flowing water.
ReplyDeleteMarco Polo, addressing The Great Khan, continues on in your quote to say "Your atlas preserves the differences intact: that assortment of qualities which are like the letters in a name" (137 Roth). I think Roth is talking about the consequence of humans. The atlas is a production of humans and I feel that we always have to put a name to something and mark something up in great detail, like we have done with out earth. As The Great Khan wants to build his empire, he is only concerned with his atlas and marking up the world. But is it really his to mark up? Polo says, "I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them" (164 Roth). As Roth took me on a journey, I discovered the book as a whole was one perfect city, comprised of qualities of different cities within.
Mary and Sam, these are great ideas. As you say, the experience of reading Invisible Cities is strange and disorienting; the cities definitely start to blur together as we get surreal description after description.
ReplyDeleteOne note: the author of Invisible Cities is Italo Calvino, not Philip Roth. Roth wrote Patrimony.
oh no, my bad! I must have had Patrimony in the back of my mind, considering I started reading it a few days prior to my post. Sorry!
ReplyDeleteSorry! I looked up at Mary's post. Whoops!
ReplyDelete