Mr.Palomar

Physical description: 118 pages, 23 cm. Notes: Includes index. Summary: A series of brief chapters each in sets of three exploring Mr Palomar's universe. The first chapter in each set is based on a visual experience and is descriptive. The second is of story form being cultural in essence and exploring language, meaning and symbols. The third is meditative concerning the cosmos, time, infinity and the relationship between self and the world. We have Palomar on the beach reading waves, trying not to look at a naked bosom and failing, swimming as the sun sets. We have Palomar in his garden trying to understand a blackbird's whistle and Palomar microscopically examining the infinity of his lawn. Palomar watching the moon and the planets and the stars. Palomar getting a new perspective on his city from his terrace and pondering the mass swirling of starlings. Palomar marvelling at all the varieties of cheeses in a cheese specialists and ending up buying a simple cheese flustered as he is called to make his order. Palomar at the zoo comparing himself to a giraffe. And we have the meditative silences of Palomar. However these simple tales are told with Calvino's intricately descriptive mind. A wonderful journey into one eccentric man's microscopically observed universe. Genre: Fiction.