''Mr. Palomar'' is a 1983 novel by the Italian writer

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosmicomi ...

. Its original Italian title is ''Palomar''. In an interview with Gregory Lucente, Calvino stated that he began writing ''Mr. Palomar'' in 1975, making it a predecessor to earlier published works such as ''

If on a winter's night a traveler ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' ( it, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore) is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called ...

''. ''Mr. Palomar'' was published in an English translation by

William Weaver William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

in 1985.

Plot

In 27 short chapters, arranged in a 3 × 3 × 3 pattern, the title character makes philosophical observations about the world around him. Calvino describes a man on a quest to quantify complex phenomena in a search for fundamental truths on the nature of being. The first section is concerned chiefly with visual experience; the second with anthropological and cultural themes; the third with speculations about larger questions such as the cosmos, time, and infinity. This thematic triad is mirrored in the three subsections of each section, and the three chapters in each subsection. For example, chapter 1.2.3, "The infinite lawn" ("Il prato infinito") has elements of all three themes, and shows the progress of the book in miniature. It encompasses very detailed observations of the various plants growing in Mr Palomar's lawn, an investigation of the symbolism of the lawn as a marker of culture versus nature, the problem of categorizing weeds, the problem of the actual extent of the lawn, the problem of how we perceive elements and collections of those elements ... These thoughts and others run seamlessly together, so by the end of the chapter we find Mr Palomar extending his mind far beyond his garden, and contemplating the nature of the universe itself.

Themes

In ''Mr. Palomar'', Calvino continued to explore his fascination with literary self-consciousness. Comparing the book to his other novels, Calvino noted ''Mr. Palomar'' is "a completely different work" in which he sought to respond to "the problem of non linguistic phenomena. . . . That is, how can one read something that is not written."Lucente, ''An Interview with Italo Calvino'', p. 248.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mister Palomar 1983 novels Novels by Italo Calvino 20th-century Italian novels Philosophical novels