Constance Markey
Italo Calvino: A Journey Toward Postmodernism
Gainsville: Universiy Press of Florida, 1999. Pp. xxii+170. $49.95
Reviewed by Joseph Francese

This book is useful for undergraduates and nonspecialists interested in Calvino; it furnishes a broad overview of Calvino's creative prose with an abundance of plot summary. Chapter 1 provides a brief biographical overview (which supplements the "Chronology," xvii-xxi) and succinct summaries of the ensuing chapters. Chapter 2 looks at Calvino's neorealist period, especially his first novel, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno. Chapter 3, "Modernist Travels," deals with Calvino's prose from the 1950s through La giornata di uno scrutatore, with the exception of the "fantastic trilogy" (which is the topic of Chapter 4). Chapter 5 traces Calvino's attempts to "liberate himself from the shackles of time and place" (89), while Chapter 6 seeks to identify Calvino with postmodern writing. The author, with the benefit of "historical hindsight" (40), retraces a trajectory that closely follows a path more coherent and linear then the one outlined by Calvino himself in the course of creating a meticulously cultivated public self-image. Here, the mature, "postmodern" Calvino is to be found in nuce in his earliest works.

Although this text is not without merit, the author's exuberance for her topic causes her to treat subjects worthy of close analysis with either excessive rapidity or simplicity. For example, her reading of the "fantastic trilogy" groups Il visconte dimezzato with Il barone rampante and Il cavaliere inesistente fails to consider the texts as historical documents of the personal, intellectual or professional developments of Calvino during the 1950s; rarely are links made to the extra- literary world. At the same time, reading would have been facilitated by a precise and explicit definition of what the author means when referring to postmodern writing and a "postmodern life view." Although such terms are used repeatedly, the reader is left to cull working definitions from their use in the text. The reader is led at times to believe that postmodern writers have organized under a manifesto (cf. 78, and 87-89) or as "colleagues" (122) in a postmodern "club" (88). In fact, the term postmodern appears so often that it functions merely as a conveniet passe-partout. The reader gradually discerns that the author has taken as her own McHale's argument that postmodernism is characterized by the ontological questions it explores (81). She does so at the expense of Hutcheon's consideration of parody as the defining trait of postmodern writing, Jameson's argument that stylistic pastiche characterizes literary postmodernism, and Ceserani's contention that postmodern writing is best defined as a cognitive strategy. (Hutcheon is mentioned in the bibliography, but not in the text, while both Jameson and Ceserani are absent from the limited bibliography, as are other recent important contributions to Calvino studies, such as those by Belpoliti and McLaughlin.)

Furthermore, the rapidity with which contentious arguments, such as the "misogynistic chord" struck by many of Calvino's female characters "through no fault of their own" (61), are dealt with is questionable. Other topics - such as a monolithic neorealism, and the issue of Calvino's political activism (which the authors sets against the backdrop of the "pat morality" of the Resistance [41] and the "sense of unanimity" that characterized Italy after World War II [27]) - seem to be so many straw targets the author knocks down with ease. At other times the reader is left with the impression that the author has not consulted directly, but relied on a summary of, critical writings dealing with Calvino's work in the 1950s and 1960's (see Chapter 4, n.1) with which she disagrees. Equally debatable is her idiosyncratic use of terms such as "some critics" (which in her usage can mean "one" [15, 120, 124]), "recent" (used to refer to works from the 1980s [49]), and "today" (used in reference to critics writing in 1967, 1969, 1972, and 1984 [38-39, 95]). Also questionable is her rendering of "fractured" (109, a characteristic of postmodern society) for dimezzato (perhaps to suggest that Calvino, while writing Il visconte dimezzato, participated in a postmodern forma mentis as early as 1951). Especially problematic is the translation of altrove ("elsewhere, in other worlds,"20) because of its close relation to the thesis of this work.

According to the author, Calvino's embrace of Sartrean existentialism in the mid-1950s was to remain a constant of all his creative prose through Palomar. His existentialism was of a piece with the "metaphysical convictions" through which Calvino strove to participate in "humanity's claim to eternity" (119). According to the author, "Against all odds, Calvino strives to liberate himself from history and opt for immortality's roundtrip" (119). However, the question of exactly how Calvino's existentialism lead him to investigate "ontological zones" outside of time (90) needs to be examined much more closely. It is not clear how Calvino's perception of "man's power to make viable choices...as a fruitless hoax" (101) coincides with the writer's "engaged" presence in Italy's daily newspapers up to his death. Nor are assertions regarding Calvino's participation in the "decidedly antihumanist mentality of our [postmodern] times" (89) justified in light of Calvino's Lezione on "Visibility." Here the writer stressed that he had looked in Le cosmicomiche "outside the human, urban civilization for both his questions and his answers" because he was convinced that our imagination must necessarily be anthropomorphic.

In sum, this work is frustrating because it promises a great deal, but is content to skim the surface of topics that, had they been treated with greater care, might have led to important contributions to Calvino studies.