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>It's the fact that Marco Polo is bullshitting, and Kublai Khan knows it, and does not care. The whole point is that this guy is a borderline fraud, weaving tal
by dmux 4y ago
>It's the fact that Marco Polo is bullshitting, and Kublai Khan knows it, and does not care. The whole point is that this guy is a borderline fraud, weaving tall tales, but no one cares because the stories are good. Its a comedic absurdist view, a mirror held up to fiction, basically asking, "who cares?"
I never quite thought Marco Polo was bullshitting, per se, but rather revealing aspects of a city (perhaps even the same exact city, or all cities, for that matter) that are otherwise left unexamined.
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoEach city is an allegory for a different literary trope or storytelling technique. The fact that they all blend together is a commentary on how story elements get recycled.
- dmux 4y agoI'll have to read up on literary tropes as I'm having a hard time picking out which ones are being explored in some of the stories. For example, the city of "Armilla" is described as being nothing but a series of pipes topped with sinks, toilets, bathtubs, etc. To me, Marco Pollo (and Calvino) are forcing the reader to think of a mostly invisible system that is a _huge_ component of any city: plumbing.
- rcarr 4y agoThere is a fairly strong argument to be made that the entire book is just a love letter to Venice. From the wikipedia: In one key exchange in the middle of the book, Kublai prods Polo to tell him of the one city he has never mentioned directly—his hometown. Polo's response: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities
- mcphage 4y agoI don't think that Invisible Cities usefully reduces down to "talking about a specific city". It talks all about cities, how people live in them, see them from the outside, etc. To say that it's just "all about Venice"—like the back of the book does—flattens the book in a way that takes away everything interesting about it. Or maybe better put: it's clearly not literally all about Venice, since the cities as described do not (and can not) exist. So why make it figuratively all about Venice?
- timeon 4y agoThis reminds me that there is reference to "Armilla" also in Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being": Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.
- antiterra 4y agoThe underpinning of the story is algorithmic, as mentioned elsewhere by others, Calvino was in Oulipo which existed to explore algorithmic art. Here’s a chart someone made: https://www.deviantart.com/monkeelino/art/Invisible-Cities-Made-Visible-297532564 https://www.deviantart.com/monkeelino/art/Invisible-Cities-M...
- antiterra 4y agoThat’s the Oulipo algorithmic underpinning, I don’t know if it makes for commentary or just is.
- antiterra 4y agoI don’t think he’s bullshitting, I think all of them are true. They all are Venice in ways Calvino saw it. The point about language is that Polo and Khan aren’t even actually able to communicate the dialog as written, they don’t understand each other verbally.