I sought out Italo Calvino this morning because I wanted to learn how he creates fairytales that seem to exist very close to reality. In the fourth story of Marcovaldo, “Winter, The City Lost in the Snow,” I found what I was looking for.
In the Beginning
Creating a dreamlike world starts with the first sentence: “That morning the silence woke him.” Yes, it is possible to be woken by silence, but it is also a clue to the reader that something out of the ordinary is happening. Then Marcovaldo senses “something strange in the air.” Calvino describes the character’s disorientation and the reader’s awareness of the strangeness deepens.
At this point, the reader is three sentences into the story and aware that the reality of this story is not the same day to day reality of the first three stories in the collection. In the fourth sentence (still in the first paragraph) the city disappears. Then the narrator describes what Marcovaldo sees “almost-erased lines, which corresponded to those of the familiar view.” Of course he could just be describing what a snowscape looks like, but because Marcovaldo found it magical, I found it magical.
As I read this first paragraph, the fantastic elements washed over me. I felt the story building, but the first three stories in the book had been so realistic that I didn’t realize what was happening to my attention until the middle of the second paragraph when I encountered the strange phraseology of “the snow had fallen on noises.” The phenomenon Calvino is describing is common—snow has a hushing quality—but the way he described it was so unusual that I was instantly intrigued.
Treading a Thin Line Between Fantasy and Reality
Even though Calvino pulls back toward the real, concrete world as he writes the almost scientific, “sounds, in a padded space, did not vibrate” he keeps Marcovaldo and me hovering between reality and fantasy. Calvino keeps Marcovaldo’s dream world present with language like, “who could say if under those white mounds there were still gasoline pumps, news-stands, tram stops, or if there were only stack upon stack of snow.” Even when Marcovaldo is put to work shoveling snow, his mind wanders and he imagines that with the snow “he could remake the city.”
Calvino did not disappoint me. I learned from this story that to create a story that exists in the borderlands between fantasy and reality, I have to set the scene very carefully. There is as much fantasy in the first paragraph of this story as there is in the rest of the paragraphs combined. Once that scene is set firmly, I am free to play back and forth between the two lands as long as the story laps back and forth between the two worlds.
Now to put it to use. Just as soon as I finish reading this book…
If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Marcovaldo from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.
Isla McKetta, MFA
Author of Polska, 1994 and co-author of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer's Guide for Transforming Artifacts into Art, Isla writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and BAs in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Washington. Isla makes her home in Seattle where she writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews and has served on the board of Seattle City of Literature and Hugo House. Recent poems can be found at antiBODY, Cascadia Rising, Hummingbird, {isacoustic*}, Lily Poetry, Minerva Rising, and Riddled with Arrows.
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