Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (novel #204)

 (translated by William Weaver)

 

…seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. ~ fictional dialogue, Marco Polo to Kublai Khan

 

Invisible Cities is an unusual novel. It is a frame story wherein Marco Polo describes the diverse cities of the Mongol empire in an audience with Kublai Khan. It is part fantasy, as all the cities are imaginary with chimerical qualities.

 

In Perinthia’s streets and square today you encounter cripples, dwarfs, hunchbacks, obese men, bearded women. But the worse cannot be seen; guttural howls are heard from cellars and lofts, where families hide children with three heads or with six legs.

 

It is part poetry as the description of each is sensual and romantic.

 

The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea.

 

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

 

And I believe it is part commentary, perhaps on the invisible thread.

 

…there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.

 

The 55 cities each bear a woman’s name and are grouped into one of eleven themes:

Cities & Memory

Cities & Desire

Cities & Signs

Thin Cities

Trading Cities

Cities & Eyes

Cities & Names

Cities & the Dead

Cities & Sky

Continuous Cities

Hidden Cities

 

At various intervals, there is a dialogue between the Khan and the explorer. Kublai senses his realm is in decline and is anxious to learn what he can from another’s senses. He is both curious and incredulous of Marco’s descriptions.

 

“This is what I wanted to hear from you: confess what you are smuggling: moods, states of grace, elegies!”

 

and

 

“There is still one [one city] of which you never speak.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”

 

It took a very silly turn when the two took a Turkish bath; the Khan blindfolded himself and then tried to locate Marco, by shouting “Marco,” to which Marco had to reply “Polo.”

 

Like my only other experience with Calvino, it is quite unconventional, but it didn’t captivate me the way If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler did. I suspect that Calvino’s message is philosophical and contemplative: mostly lost on me, though I admire his innovative approach and turn of phrase.

 

-- Just kidding about the Turkish bath, Marco Polo game :p --

 

 

My rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies "A Classic in Translation" [Italian to English] category in the Back to the Classics 2022 Challenge.

 

 Excerpt:

 

…I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper’s swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen’s nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat’s progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen’s illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the deck.

 

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Second Foundation (Foundation #3) by Isaac Asimov (novel #203)

A circle has no end ~ Arcadia Darrell

Second Foundation is the third book in the Foundation trilogy. There are subsequent prequels and sequels, but the trilogy stands complete.

 

Foundation (book #1) – Hari Seldon, the Galaxy’s preeminent psychohistorian, scientifically predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and creates The Foundation to mitigate the ensuing chaos and suffering.

 

Foundation and Empire (book #2) – Seldon’s predictions prove accurate, and the benevolent intentions of the Foundation are confounded by the emergence of a mysterious conqueror known as the Mule. There are rumors of a Second Foundation at the far end of the Galaxy.

 

Second Foundation (book #3) – The Mule is rendered harmless, and The Foundation attempts to right the Galaxy and return to Seldon’s plan. However, members of The Foundation grow suspicious of The Second Foundation, never wholly convinced of its existence, and seem to work at cross purposes. It may be that hope of reconciliation and sparing the galaxy many millennia of suffering rests with Arcadia Darrell, the precocious granddaughter of Bayta Darrell, hero of book #2.

 

I found it riveting, filled with suspense, intrigue, human interest, and plenty of unexpected twists, especially in this concluding book. But I was a bit disappointed. I thought the suspicion The Foundation developed for The Second Foundation somewhat incongruous. They were ordinarily strict disciples of Seldon’s plan, and if The Second Foundation was part of the plan, it didn’t follow that they would attempt to subvert it. There is an explanation, but I thought it was weak and unconvincing.

 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the trilogy. I’ll read more Sci-Fi by Asimov, but I don't think I'll read more in the Foundation series. The trilogy wrapped it up nicely, and I’ll leave it there.

  

My rating for book #3 and the trilogy as a whole: 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

 

In my review of book #1, I mentioned that I believed the setting to be the distant future of Earth’s humanity, but that Asimov is never explicit on this point. In book # 3, there are some obvious clues that this is so. One character refers to another’s efforts as quixotic, a definite reference to Earth literature. The narrative also explains the standard time measure of the Galaxy as consisting of seconds, minutes, hours, and years based on the solar time of some planet lost in history.

 

For reason or reasons unknown to members of the Galaxy at the time of the era under discussion…

 

…before Man had spread beyond a single, now-unknown world.

 

And the synopses of other Foundation series books confirm Earth’s origin of the story.

 

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Foundation and Empire (Foundation #2) by Isaac Asimov (novel #202)

…” intelligence”, “espionage,” and “spy stuff” are at best a sordid business of routine betrayal and bad faith. ~ Capt Han Pritcher

 

The opening quotation isn’t significant to the story, but it amuses me it as it applies to my day job.

 

In Foundation, Hari Seldon, the Galaxy’s preeminent psychohistorian, makes a startling prediction or scientific prophecy: the fall of the Galactic Empire and 30,000 years of chaos before a new galactic empire emerges. Shortly before his death, Seldon surreptitiously creates the Foundation, a consortium of his followers intent upon mitigating the 30,000 years down to 1,000 – a possibility under Seldon’s prediction.

 

In Foundation and Empire, the Galaxy is several hundred years into the interregnum. The Foundation has already survived several “Seldon Crisis,” an eventuality Seldon predicted would make the difference between 30,000 and 1,000. But an unforeseen threat emerges. An enigmatic and powerful conqueror known as The Mule subdues the crumbling remnants of the Empire, other independent worlds, and even the Foundation. This would seem to doom Seldon’s plans, but even as the Foundation crumbles, there is renewed hope. There are vague rumors of a Second Foundation at the far end of the Galaxy.

 

Hope to find the Second Empire seems to lie with an unlikely group: husband and wife team Toran and Bayta Darrell; prominent Foundation scientist Ibling Mis; and the Mule’s jester, Magnifico, who has defected to the custody of the Foundation trio, and who is particularly devoted to Bayta.

 

Like Foundation, the first in the trilogy, Foundation and Empire, ends abruptly and without closure. To find out how it all ends, I’ll take up the third book Second Foundation. The title can be confusing. Second Foundation is the third book in the trilogy: Foundation (#1), Foundation and Empire (#2), Second Foundation (#3). The title refers to the second mysterious Foundation hidden somewhere and presumably the last hope of defeating The Mule and reducing the interregnum from 30,000 to 1,000 years.

 

My rating is 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

 

 

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Foundation by Isaac Asimov (novel #201)

"A civilization falling. Nuclear power forgotten. Science fading to mythology – until the Foundation had stepped in."

 

In a far distant future, during the waning years of a vast galactic empire, a single scientist, Hari Seldon, is charged with treason precisely because he is predicting the end.

 

Seldon is the galaxy’s preeminent authority on psychohistory, which he has advanced to such fidelity that he is able to predict major events in future human history: in this case the fall of the Galactic Empire and the ensuing 30,000 years of chaos and suffering. Seldon purports the fall is certain and unavoidable, but that with intervention now, the 30,000 years can be mitigated to merely 1,000 before the rise of the second Galactic Empire.

 

The trial is part of his plan. It is helpful to be smarter than everyone around you, especially the unbelievers. With some clever subterfuge, Seldon is “sentenced” to exile on a distant world, along with his disciples, which is exactly what he wanted. There, he begins forming the Foundation that will intervene to spare humanity the unnecessary 30,000 years.

 

Seldon only survives the first 40 or 50 pages, depending on the version. The rest of the tale narrates four different epochs of future history. Each separated by a “Seldon Crisis”. Seldon occasionally reappears, via prerecorded hologram, to guide his future disciples along the way. The leading disciple, Salvor Hardin has the following to say, about Seldon’s psychohistory:

 

The Foundation, as he [Hari Seldon] says, was established as a scientific refuge – the means by which the science and culture of the dying Empire was to be preserved through the centuries of barbarism that have begun, to be rekindled in the end into a second Empire.

 

…the future isn’t nebulous. It’s been calculated out by Seldon and charted.

 

There is occasional reference to a Second Foundation, at the opposite end of the Galaxy, which does not come into play in this book.

 

Which is my only complaint. This book, Foundation, is incomplete. There is no closure. It ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly. I knew it was the first in the Foundation Trilogy, and this is one of the reasons I’m not a big fan of trilogies. You never know, without reading reviews and risking spoilers, if any one book can stand alone, or if you must commit to the entire thing; in this case – the entire thing. I intended to do so regardless, but I would have been rather annoyed had I intended to read a single book only to be left hanging. It’s semantics really. Trilogy vs. series. In my opinion, the Foundation trilogy should really be labeled Parts I, II, and III – and in many publication formats today they are, but I don’t believe they were originally labelled that way.  

 

Enough of that. I still enjoyed it very much. Thus far, it’s a bit different from many Sci-Fi novels, as there are no aliens. The only sentient life forms are human. It is probably, the far distant future of Earth’s humanity, colonizing other habitable, but uninhabited worlds. Asimov is never explicit on this point, and there may be some big reveal later, though I doubt it. I think these specifics were left out to allow the reader to infer as they like.

 

My rating 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

 

This book satisfies the category: Wild Card Classic, in the Back to the Classics 2022 Challenge.

 

The Author, Isaac Asimov is considered one of the "Big Three" of Science Fiction, along with Arthur C. Clarke and  Robert Heinlein

 

There is a device Asimov uses throughout that I found interesting. In his future galaxy, there is no mention of God. There is a religion but it worships the “Galactic Spirit”. It is never personal. Hence, expletives employ cosmic references: By Space!, or I Swear by the Universe, or Great Galaxy!

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101 - 200 Greatest Novels of All Time

In wrapping up novels 101 – 200 I should point out a distinction between the first 100, which were all classics, and the second 100, which included some contemporary novels which cannot yet be considered classics – though they may still be considered “great”.

 

This post is rather longish, but if you just want to see the list...it's at the end, with hyperlinks to each individual review.

 

I began the second century of my quest on July 1, 2018 and completed it June 30, 2022 or four years to the day from the first page of Gadsby * to the last page of The Princess Bride. The longest amount of time I spent on one book was 75 days for The Tale of Genji; the shortest was a few hours to read The Little Prince. The average was 15 days per novel.

* not to be confused with The Great Gatsby, which coincidentally was the first novel of 1 - 100.

 

The longest book was The Tale of Genji with 1182 pages. The shortest was The Little Prince at 93. The total page count was 34,102, or an average of 341 pages.

 

The oldest book was The Tale of Genji, which some call the World’s First Novel, probably written very early 11^th century. There were two novels from the 16^th Century, three from the 18^th, 30 from the 19^th, 60 from the 20^th, and four from the 21^st century. The average year of publication was 1907.

 

There were eight novels by Charles Dickens, four by Arthur Conan Doyle, and two each by A.A. Milne, Iris Murdoch, Lewis Carrol, Ray Bradbury, and Truman Capote. There were also two completely different novels of the same title: Greenmantle and...of course Greenmantle by James Buchan and Charles de Lint.

 

I intended to show my trophy case here: bookcases in my home office with all 200 hardcover books, but I’ve moved recently, and most of my books are in storage ***sigh*** I miss them.

 

A few of my prized copies: I have a first-edition of The Little Prince. My edition of Ender’s Game is autographed by Orson Scott Card and my edition of Devil in a Blue Dress is autographed by Walter Mosley.

 

Covers: These do not all represent the version I read, but rather covers that I find emblematic of the story.

 

 

 

Ratings are not commentary on the “Greatness” of these works, rather they reflect my personal enjoyment of the read – very opinionated. Secondly, in order to differentiate amongst a group that are all considered “Great”, I set the bar very high for 5 or even 4 stars. 3.5 is above the median; still a good rating. If you plot my ratings on a graph, the result is a fairly standard bell curve, which suggests consistency in rating.

 

Average Rating: 3.8 stars

 

A few distinctions:

 

Top 10 Favorites

A Tale of Two Cities

The Little Prince

Watership Down

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Bleak House

The Cellist of Sarajevo

Of Mice and Men

The Old Man and the Sea

The Man Who was Thursday

Fahrenheit 451

 

Top 10 Dislikes

The Recognitions

Portnoy’s Complaint

The Tale of Genji

Journey to the End of the Night

Monkey: Journey to the West

Gargantua and Pantagruel

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The House on the Borderland

Phantastes

The Collector

 

Best Subtitles/Alternate Titles:

Gadsby: 50,000 Word Novel Without the Letter “E”

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

The Oak Openings or The Bee Hunter

The Monkey King’s Amazing Adventures: Journey to the West

Oliver Twist or The Beggar Boy’s Progress

The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version Abridged by William Goldman

 

Most Unusual:

Gadsby

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

The Princess Bride

 

Most Surprising:

The Man Who was Thursday

 

Most Underappreciated:

The Oak Openings

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

 

Most Overrated:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Papillon

Candide

 

Happiest Ending:

Bleak House

Oliver Twist

 

Saddest Ending (in a good way):

A Tale of Two Cities

The Little Prince

The Cellist of Sarajevo

 

Saddest Ending (in a just plain ole sad way):

The Collector

 

Most Unexpected Ending:

The Man Who was Thursday

 

Most Satisfying Ending:

A Tale of Two Cities

The Oak Openings

Oliver Twist

 

Least Satisfying Ending:

The Collector

 

Favorite Hero:

Sydney Carton – A Tale of Two Cities

Hazel – Watership Down

Tom Sawyer – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Parson Amen – The Oak Openings

Dr. Watson – The Sign of the Four

Tom – Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Pooh – Winnie the Pooh

Easy Rawlins – Devil in a Blue Dress

 

Favorite Heroine:

Arrow – The Cellist of Sarajevo

Dorothea – Middlemarch

Esther – Bleak House

Mina Harker – Dracula

Eliza – Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Molly – Wives and Daughters

 

Best Villain:

Frederick Clegg – The Collector

General Woundwort – Watership Down

Perry Smith – In Cold Blood

Count Dracula – Dracula

Other Mother – Coraline

Manfred – The Castle of Otranto

Simon Legree – Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Ratman – Ratman’s Notebooks

Fagin – Oliver Twist

The Six-Fingered Man – The Princess Bride

 

Most Interesting/Complex Characters:

Sunday – The Man Who was Thursday

The Little Prince – The Little Prince

Mike the computer – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Onoah – The Oak Openings

Charles Arrowby – The Sea, the Sea

Jake Donaghue – Under the Net

Moses Herzog – Herzog

Papillon – Papillon

Saleem Sinai – Midnight’s Children

Inigo Montoya – The Princess Bride

 

Favorite Quotations:

…the time your friends need you is when they’re wrong, Jean Louise. They don’t need you when they’re right. ~ Uncle Jack from Go Set a Watchman

 

…she is, at once, sure of two things. The first is that she does not want to kill this man, and the second is that she must. ~ narrative regarding Arrow, from The Cellist of Sarajevo

 

“Adventures are all very well in their place”, he thought, “but there’s a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.” ~ Tristran Thorn

 

Best Film Renditions:

The Princess Bride (1987) – Just about perfect: perfectly written, cast, and acted. And although this part is not part of the book, at the end, when Peter Falk’s character says “as you wish” to his grandson played by Fred Savage…it just about kills me (in a good way).

 

Honorable mentions:

Of Mice and Men (1939)

Watership Down (2018 TV miniseries)

Bleak House (2005 TV miniseries)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

 

Worst Film Renditions:

I want to say Breakfast at Tiffanys because it is not true to the book, Audrey Hepburn does not match the description of Holly Golightly, and there is terrible casting and offensive portrayal of a Japanese person, but if you just accept the film is not the book and ignore the Japanese portrayal, the film is iconic. Hepburn makes the film and the role her own.

 

So, my genuine answer for Worst Film Rendition is Ender’s Game. Though 90 percent of the film is pretty OK. It completely blows the all-important big reveal near the end.

 

Now what? 201-300 of course. I read other forms of literature, but predominantly novels. My TBR of novels alone is over 2,000 titles. I might even occasionally read something not on any of my lists, which could inspire a new list. I love lists. By the way a lover of lists is an albumiphile – a term I created. You read it here first (unless you first read it on my recap of the first 100 novels)

 

Quite obviously, I won’t finish my TBR in this lifetime. I have no idea what the Heavenly library is like, so I make no promise for the next. There are a few authors I hope to talk to though.

 

And finally...here are the 101 thru 200 Greatest Novels of all Time (hyperlinked to individual reviews)

 

101     Gadsby

102     The Pickwick Papers

103     The Little Prince

104     The Man Who Was Thursday

105     Of Mice and Men

106     Three Men in a Boat

107     A Tale of Two Cities

108     Breakfast at Tiffany's

109     The Old Curiosity Shop

110     Middlemarch

111     The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

112     The Invisible Man

113     The Idiot

114     Dream of the Red Chamber

115     A Study in Scarlet

116     The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

117     The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

118     An Antarctic Mystery (The Sphinx of the Ice Fields)

119     Watership Down

120     Bleak House

121     The Ox-Bow Incident

122     Wise Blood

123     Papillon

124     Candide

125     In Cold Blood

126     The Old Man and the Sea

127     The Valley of Fear

128     Gargantua and Pantagruel

129     The Shadow Over Innsmouth

130     The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

131     Picnic at Hanging Rock

132     The Oak Openings

133     The Day of the Triffids

134     Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

135     Through the Looking Glass

136     Coraline

137     A Christmas Carol

138     Dracula

139     The Universal Baseball Association

140     Lost Horizon

141     Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

142     If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

143     Riders of the Purple Sage

144     Jude the Obscure

145     The Sea, The Sea

146     At Swim Two-Birds

147     Fahrenheit 451

148     The Sign of the Four

149     Phantastes

150     The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story

151     The Tale of Genji

152     The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

153     Cry, the Beloved Country

154     Nicholas Nickleby

155     The Stranger

156     Ragtime

157     Where the Red Fern Grows

158     Something Wicked This Way Comes

159     The House on the Borderland

160     The Hound of the Baskervilles

161     Wide Sargasso Sea

162     Under the Net

163     Greenmantle

164     Greenmantle

165     Jonathan Livingston Seagull

166     Winnie the Pooh

167     The House at Pooh Corner

168     Germinal

169     Big Trouble

170     Uncle Tom’s Cabin

171     Wives and Daughters

172     The Country of the Pointed Firs

173     Herzog

174     Ratman’s Notebooks

175     Journey to the West

176     Devil in a Blue Dress

177     Sybil; or, The Two Nations

178     Journey to the End of the Night

179     Hard Times

180     The Golden Compass

181     The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

182     Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha

183     The Loved One

184     Murder on the Orient Express

185     The Corrections

186     The Worm Ouroboros

187     Rebecca

188     The Collector

189     The Haunting of Hill House

190     At Play in the Fields of the Lord

191     Ender’s Game

192     The Cellist of Sarajevo

193     The Recognitions

194     Go Set a Watchman

195     Stardust

196     The Death of the Heart

197     Portnoy’s Complaint

198     Midnight’s Children

199     Oliver Twist

200     The Princess Bride

 

Wrap-up of Novels 1 – 100 HERE

 

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