I 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

I 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?