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The thought of a time outside our experience is intolerable.

Had I met someone like Mr. Palomar before reading this book, I’d have easily passed him off as just another middle aged man on the verge of senility with nothing better to do with his time or at the most a mad wannabe scientist who realized about his true calling when it was too late with no one interested about his observations or findings. But trust Mr. Calvino when it comes to make seemingly weak characters strong and one of the most dull situations interesting for his readers. The words flown from Calvino’s pen can render an act of staring at a ceiling fan as the most exciting adventure ever known to man, however, Mr. Palomar gives us something wider in scope which enshrouds not only his home or his local market but the whole universe including moon and stars (If Calvino won’t talk about celestial bodies then who will).

The book is divided into three parts and each part deals with a particular experience which helps Mr. Palomar in exploring various events and visuals in order to find answers about the bigger questions of life. Philosophical Enquiry is what it is called? It is but it’s something which carries the Calvinian trademark and gives us a whole new way to indulge in such philosophies without losing interest for a single moment. Mr. Palomar takes us to a beach where he observes the coming and going of the waves while waiting unsuccessfully for a repetition of a phenomenon and on the same beach he is trying his best about looking or not looking or looking in a most natural and decent (!) way at the naked bosom of a female bather. If you want to know how subtly the humor coated with right dose of irony can be used in a most successful fashion in fiction in very few words, then read this piece. In a similar way, Mr. Palomar observes love making between tortoises, tries to decipher the whistling of birds and makes an attempt in giving words to the silence. And when Mr. Palomar looks at the sky! The words thereof are like music to the ears. It makes you fall in love all over again with the stars in the night sky, the moon in the afternoon and the beauty of the world around us.

If the ancients had been able to see it as I see it now, Mr. Palomar thinks, they would have thought they had projected their gaze into the heaven of Plato's ideas, or in the immaterial space of the postulates of Euclid; but instead, thanks to some misdirection or other, this sight has been granted to me, who fear it is too beautiful to be true, too gratifying to my imaginary universe to belong to the real world. But perhaps it is this same distrust of our senses that prevents us from feeling comfortable in the universe. Perhaps the first rule I must impose on myself is this: stick to what I see.

Mr. Palomar journey further extends to a visit to his local supermarket, a zoo in Barcelona, Garden of rocks and sand of the Ryoanji of Kyoto in Japan and Ruins of Tula in Mexico. He looks, he observes, he contemplates, he draw conclusions but even on viewing the whole world as a museum where there’s hardly any entry charge, he’s not able to find a concrete relation of his existence with that of the universe. He feels the need of defining every moment, every instant of his being and also the need of finding a set pattern in the world which gives him the pleasure of knowing that he has lived his life the way it ought to be lived and the universe exist the way it ought to exist whether Mr. Palomar is a part of it or not. He is extremely unsure of himself and the gist of the matter is - he wants to be at peace with himself.

...the world around him moves in an unharmonious way, and he hopes always to find some pattern in it, a constant. Perhaps because he himself feels that his own advance is impelled by uncoordinated movements of the mind, which seem to have nothing to do with one another and are increasingly difficult to fit into any pattern of inner harmony.

Now, you see Calvino can’t do anything wrong in my eyes. With such books, I feel like he indulges me a lot and gladly accompany me in my insanity. He don’t even have to try to make me smile because his writing, which is carried out with a unique blend of intellect and easiness, does that effortlessly. It’s fascinating to see the extent of his observational skills and equally fascinating when those observations are given shape in form of words. But I’m reluctant in recommending this book to everyone. I can vouch for great writing but subject matter might not appeal to all, so read it when you want to read a little book with a big heart.

A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, How could I have lived without having read it! and also, What a pity I did not read it in my youth! Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his whole life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading.

Italo Calvino with Jorge Luis Borges