Perhaps someday someone will compile the gems scattered about Calvino’s lesser works into a single great volume. I can’t recommend a collection based on its final fourth alone. If the ratio were reversed, this collection would be a very good one overall, but, as it stands, the mediocre overpowers the noteworthy. The ultimate problem, therefore, is that Collection of Sand is three-quarters essays and one-quarter travelogues. The exploration of foreign lands lent themselves to introspective exploration, and Calvino delivers on both fronts. Here, that heightened observation gives Calvino a path to the more abstract discussion of ideas that I wished his essays would reach but never did. Calvino could have been a great travel writer, in part because of a realization he expresses in one of his pieces on Japan that travel does not lead to understanding, but does enhance observation. The pieces on foreign countries are much better than the essays, with Calvino’s musings on Japan and Iran being particularly strong (his Mexico material is overshadowed by Under the Jaguar Sun, no pun intended). I appreciated little tidbits like this, but chiefly because of my love of Calvino’s other works and not for the sake of the work at hand. They may contain characters of symbolic complexity, but that’s not at all the same thing. The best pieces of these works are the throwaway line referring to Calvino’s personal opinion, like the sentence where Calvino states that he has “never felt any strong urge to explore psychological depths” that made me realize that not a single one of Calvino’s books have any characters of psychological complexity. The structure of these essays are so similar that they feel repetitive, and even begin to feel uninspired.
So, essentially, Calvino’s essay ends just when it’s getting good (the one exception being the essay that gives the collection its name, where Calvino goes outside the boundary of his subject and delves into introspection a bit earlier). Instead they are Calvino’s accounts of museum exhibits, or academic essays, or chapters of books, with most of each essay spent describing or summarizing the subject, giving some of Calvino’s interpretation (inevitable in any description), but doing nothing more until the final paragraph, where, for a brief moment, Calvino reaches outside of the immediate topic and gives you something more thought provoking. The essays in Collection of Sand are not like La Poubelle Agreee, in that Calvino does not use them as a jumping off point for anything greater. He does not abandon his original topic, indeed he focuses on it throughout, but he uses the everyday as a springboard for his imagination and shows you something wonderful. For instance, what made his essay on garbage (“La Poubelle Agreee”) so excellent is the way in which he started discussing something that seems mundane, but he brings you along with the flow of his thoughts to new, beautiful perspectives you would never have considered on your own. While the stories of Calvino’s travels were indeed strong, my great expectations were not met overall because the essays tend to be formulaic, and (though I hate to say this about anything Calvino wrote) sometimes even boring.Ĭalvino’s strengths as a writer are numerous, but chief among them is his imagination.
Thus, I went into Collection of Sand expecting great things, as it is comprised of essays and stories of Calvino’s travels. My favorite work in Calvino’s The Road to San Giovanni was an essay (with Calvino transforming the topic of garbage into a brilliant meditation on modern living), and my favorite story in Under the Jaguar Sun was the titular story of a trip to Mexico. Calvino is one of my favorite authors, so he makes the cut easily, but Collection of Sand nevertheless ended up being a disappointment.
COLLECTION OF SAND ITALO CALVINO FREE
My favorite work in Calvino’s The Road to San Giovanni was an essay (with Calvino transforming the topic of garbage into a brilliant meditation on modern living), and my favorite story in Under the Jaguar Sun was the tit In my free time I almost exclusively read fiction, but, when I like an author enough, I sometimes give that author’s non-fiction writing a try. In my free time I almost exclusively read fiction, but, when I like an author enough, I sometimes give that author’s non-fiction writing a try.
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