Under the Jaguar Sun

While I sat on the beach, I read Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino, an author that I have been dieing to read for the last year.  It is one of my best friends favorite authors which was the extra added push to do so.  Under the Jaguar Sun is a compilation of the last three stories Calvino wrote before he died.  The stories were ultimately supposed to be about the five senses.  After finishing the third, you desperately wish for two more.  The last story, about the nose, was my least favorite but only because the first two were fantastic.  Each story individually transports you to another world with words so lush you really believe at times you are there, they make you laugh (sometimes out loud), ponder, and sometimes become overly emotional about your own life as I myself witnessed. 

The second story is about the ear and hearing.  A brief excerpt follows:

The scepter must be held in the right hand, erect; you must never, never put it down, and for that matter you would have no place to put it: there are no tables beside the thrown, or shelves, or stands to hold, say, a glass, an ashtray, a telephone.  High, at the top of steep and narrow steps, the throne is isolated; if you drop anything, it rolls down and can never be found afterwards.  God help you if the scepter slips from your grasp; you would have to rise, get down from the throne to pick it up; no one but the king may touch it.  And it would be hardly a pretty sight to see a king stretched out on the floor to reach the scepter fetched  up under some piece of furniture -- or, when it comes to that, the crown, which could easily fall off your head if you bend over. 

Comments

[jOjo]

The only book I've part read from Italo Calvino was one that was basically his notes to 6 conferences about his point of view on literature and how texts should be written.

I wrote about the first two chapters,
http://crossroads.berkeleyblogs.com/archives/000183.html

and

http://crossroads.berkeleyblogs.com/archives/000184.html

I never finished the book. And, it's a shame that I must cleanse before the new year ends.

Anyway, I liked your blog a lot, and I like your art as well. Oh, and the fact that you read Calvino has my head spinning, spinning, spinning.

Whooh...

[Groove]

"And it would be hardly a pretty sight to see a king stretched out on the floor to reach the scepter fetched up under some piece of furniture -- or, when it comes to that, the crown, which could easily fall off your head if you bend over."

.... or a Queen for that matter :)

That was deep! Story of my life!