Calvino's serio-comic galactic overview (Cosmicomics — 1968) descends, in these three long stories; to an erratic exploration of human institutions and the priorities of allegiances, which, with a tilt or two, produce some unusual results. "The Watcher" is Communist party man Amerigo, a poll watcher in a highly conservative church district of hospitals, asylums, and convents where Italy's misfits and recluses have the vote thrust upon them. Would not an idiot's vote cancel his? And while Amerigo's mistress bombards him by phone throughout the day with unreasonable, disturbing irregularities, including pregnancy, Amerigo ponders the regenerative nature of order and institutions, with a gloomy dialectic amid the gossipy bustle of the election workers. In "Smog" a city dweller experiences the solid celebration of industrial power in an increasingly dangerous cloud of soot. The last story, "The Argentinian Ant," again examines a phenomenon dealing with the powers and principalities of a sacrosanct establishment — in this case a giant, destructive horde of ants, fed mindlessly by a government agent. An amusing, lightly sardonic, barbed assault on self-perpetuating, self-sustaining establistments built by men but now attaining the untouchable elevation of a divine law.
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 1970
ISBN: 0156949520
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1970
The title, American Scholar editor Epstein (Partial Ideas, 1988, etc.) tells us, is taken from Paul Klee's explanation of his art: ``I take a line out for a walk''-which, Epstein adds, ``describes exactly, precisely, absolutely what I do.'' And so it does, as demonstrated by these congenial essays, which ramble and slide from one idea to another, but always attain some sort of destination, or point. Erudite, opinionated, smug, gleefully self-exposing, Epstein muses here on the allure of fame, the art of the put-down, gambling, envy, the travails of being short (``In literature, treachery is frequently assigned to small people''), the domination of money (``Like the lady said, money is funny, and the biggest laugh may be reserved for those of us who are clownish enough to believe we can rise about it''), etc. In all: provocative after-dinner chat, with sniftered brandy and boxed cigars at hand.
Pub Date: April 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-393-02955-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
A compelling collection of five dreamlike, mysterious long stories all published in the years 1987—90, by a highly praised Japanese writer whose Kafkaesque fictions have won his country’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Ikezawa’s baffled, questing characters—a factory worker whose collusion with a criminal associate makes him a psychic “fugitive” (“Still Life”); a weather observer who infers from nature’s unpredictability that “the whole human race is powerless”; and a survivor of an ill-fated expedition unhinged by the changes survival has wrought in him (“Revenant”), among others, share a stunned awareness of the paradox silently mocking those who would transcend: that “there’s a way of life in which all existence becomes one. . . But the only way we can live is by being enclosed within ourselves.” Haunting fiction, not nearly as abstract as summary makes it sound, from a major new talent.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 4-7700-2185-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
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