We started this meeting by sharing some first impressions of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, moved on to discuss our goals for the summer, and then started to try to establish some essential conflicts that are present in the "novel," if we can call it that. It would be best here to start with repeating our goals:
a) we will practice the skill of connecting the parts of work of literature to what we determine to be its whole. By "parts," I mean both discreet elements such as language from passages and plot details, but also elements such as tone, shifts in tone, the structure of the literature, literary and rhetorical devices, and any other significant element of the language. By "whole," I mean that you must have a sense of what the whole piece of literature is concerned with, what the literature is revealing to you, or what really matters at the core of the piece. Ultimately, you should be able to identify the parts of a piece of literature and demonstrate how they contribute to the essence of the whole.
b) we will practice moving beyond the stage of observing (I see this in the literature, I see that in the literature) and pushing ourselves to make a bold assertion about what all these details are leading to. Try doing this in your quotation response journals. Basically, we are going to practice moving from pointing out parts to establishing the whole.
One of the students asked a very sharp question yesterday: she was wondering what is ultimately the difference between AP Lit and AP Language as far as what is expected as an outcome -- in an essay, for instance. In general, this comes down to what your bold assertion (or thesis) will look like. In AP Language students will often read speeches, memoirs, researched arguments etc., and explore the rhetorical strategies used by the authors to make a point or argument. In AP Lit, you will often be dealing with a work of literature that does not necessarily have an argument, but drops you on the doorstep of a deep and insoluble human conflict. Your assertion, therefore, will identify the conflict and communicate why it is deep, meaningful and significant, but it will not try to simplify and solve the problem. The AP exam wants you to explore the complexity of the problem.
** Invisible Cities**
First impressions of this book were mixed. Some of the students enjoyed its meditative quality and seemed to be interested in the book's freedom from narrative conventions. Some really enjoyed the vividness of the details of each city. One student found the book's repetitions and apparent contradictions frustrating and not particularly illuminating, and another found the individual descriptions of the cities to be too short for the reader to become absorbed in anything. Another really enjoyed the dialogue between Polo and Khan the best.
I next asked the class to try to decide, in pairs, what fundamental conflict or problematic idea haunts the book. One pair decided that there seemed to be a conflict between practicality and purpose on one hand (Khan) and a total absorption in details on the other (Polo). One group noted a conflict between memory and language, with language often warping or obliterating memory. One student noted that the prospect of unlimited creativity and imaginative possibility is inherently destructive and needs boundaries. Another student noted that there seemed to be a problem of "knowing": Khan has a drive to know as much as he can about his kingdom, and Polo runs in the opposite direction, collapsing what can be known through ambiguity and mystery. Communication, as one student remarked, seems to be at the heart of all of these problems.
After this we shared some quotes and thought briefly about how they may connect to these fundamental conflicts, although we did not have enough time to connect them in a very satisfying way. Some great quotes were shared: the two part city in which the circus is its only permanent element, the city that is always pushing its waste somewhere else, the city of consumers who are constantly disposing of one thing for the next, and the beautiful final paragraph about suffering.
It was a great start over all, especially nailing down what's essential about the book and the course.
*** For Next Meeting ***
The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 23rd on the first 15 Chapters of Invisible Man (by Ralph Ellison). You will need to turn in a quotation response journal with ten quotations on that date. There will be ten more for the second half.
If you missed the meeting for Invisible Man, please respond to some of the ideas in this blog post with a minimum 250 word response in the comment section. This needs to be done before the next meeting time.
Thanks for reading, Mr. Telles.
Personally, the only part of the book I actually enjoyed was Calvino’s vivid description of each city. Other than that, I thought the book was frustrating to interpret and boring overall. Despite this, I was able to interpret some of Calvino’s central ideas throughout the book. Although this was not mentioned in the meeting, I thought that one of the main conflicts in the book was beautiful superficiality versus the disturbing reality that lies underneath since Calvino touches on this topic from city to city. Also, Calvino implies that when there is no beautiful superficiality to hide behind, the city’s inhabitants are either oblivious or ignorant of the city’s horrendous features. It seems that Calvino is trying to warn the reader of these inhabitants in an attempt to prevent this same tragedy from occurring in their city because if they do not heed his warnings, the reader could find themselves living in a similar dystopia like that of the World State or Babylon. In addition, I felt that the final paragraph about suffering was one of the most important passages of the book because it is the main factor that separates the utopias from the dystopias. Calvino states that while there is suffering in all cities, it is the inhabitant’s reaction to this suffering that defines what type of city he lives in. Calvino explains quite brashly that the people who choose to accept their suffering will eventually become a part of it, warning the reader not to take such actions lest his home deteriorate and fall like the dystopias Calvino mentions. However, Calvino offers another, but bolder option to the readers, an option he praises those who choose its path; protect and support those who dare to defy their suffering and remain faithful to their own morals.
ReplyDeleteI found this book ineffective at achieving its purpose of bringing life to cities through particular stories and agree with the statement that each passage is too short to capture the true meaning of the city and its life. I also agree with the idea that the passages were contradicting and repetitive offering little insight to each city as a whole but rather included insight about human nature and common themes to all cities. While some of my peers found the freedom of the book enjoyable I find it in a way annoying and easily relatable to “Century of the Wind” a book that similarly jumped from event to event instead of place to place creating a list of separate ideas printed together and called a novel. In these types of books I find it difficult to focus on meaning and importance and instead focus on the problems with each of the individual pieces of writing. In my opinion the story was hard to follow. While I didn’t enjoy the story as a whole and found it hard to believe that you can bring life to a city with a passage I thought the descriptive elements used to attempt to bring life to a city were very believable and the individual events that offered insight to a persons mind and allowed me to make personal connections were deeply consuming and interesting. Overall I believe that the passages could have been linked into a story with a little more work but the description was highly intense and capturing.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I enjoyed this book. I like the “on the surface” meanings but not the deeper meanings of it. It's true; the passages describing each city were much too short to give us a real feel for the city. I liked reading briefly about each city, but right before i got really interested, the section was over and it was moving on to the nest city. The fast pace of the city descriptions, i felt, kind of went with the book. There were so many cities to describe and the fact that that there were so many, i felt it was appropriate to move through them quickly. Like Winslow said though, it was hard to focus on any kind of meaning or importance. I really did look at just the writing itself, and how my mind had to be quick and ready to change places. I found it hard to like the cities together; maybe I was thinking to hard or really could not see the connection. I saw it with some, but not all of them. I was able to make some personal connections which were interesting to me because I didn't think I could relate to a book full of city descriptions. Are they all actually cities? I wondered if there were any towns. I haven't seen many cities in my life. Winslow is totally right about her "Century of the Wind" connection, the book really did jump from thing to thing, but it was easier to connect because stories would reappear but different events would be going on. Personally, my favorite part was the dialogue between Polo and Khan. The two were polar opposite, Khan wanting to care and know as much about the kingdom and every single detail as possible, while Polo has him running in circles without much useful communication. I agree with the student who said that communication was the main problem. I also really did like the descriptions of the city, as short as they were, I could easily picture most in my mind. It was fun for me to come up with these cities in my mind and try to picture the events going on there. In the end, I did like this book; I found it intriguing and creative. I do wish the city stories were easier to connect, because if they were, I think I would have enjoyed this book a lot more than I did. The descriptions were great though.
ReplyDeleteI thought the book was alright. But I think the real points and the parts that had the most importance where during the talks between the Khan and Marco Polo. Only through their talks can you see the real meaning and purpose of each city was told about for. It was interesting to read about each city and compare each one to the ones it is grouped with in the rest of the book. Also, I really enjoyed the short synopsis of each city. Each one was long enough to tell a quick story and make it memorable, but was also short enough that you could read every single detail about a town without losing interest in that particular city. But I want to talk more about Marco Polo and the Khan. That is where the tone and certain elements of the book change. They talk without words, then they talk with words but this makes it a less enjoyable conversation. This little revelation is an interesting aspect about people in general. It would seem that we want people to say a certain thing at a certain time. And when they can only do motions, we can interpret them the way we want. When they actually say words, it narrows down the way we can understand them. And I believe that communication was the point of the entire book. That communication can bring people closer together, but perhaps you never wanted to understand what that person was saying after all. And that sometimes when we tell stories about our memories, the story blurs the facts about what happened and then you can only remember the story you told.
ReplyDeleteThe writing in this book is beautiful. I sometimes got more enjoyment from a particular phrase or word choice than from the plot as a whole. The particulars of a few city's have stuck with me where the imagery was particularly vivid. The city with the strings connecting everyone especially impacted me. It seems like Polo was not only describing parts of one whole city in small pieces, but also parts of human nature. With this lens in mind, it is even more interesting to think about the difference in attitude between Polo and Khan. If we are talking about human nature, and Khan wants to know only truth and fact, and polo wants to look at the mysterious beautiful side of things, this makes total sense with their characters as well. It took me a while to get invested in the book, and I think I might have enjoyed it more just reading it slowly one city at a time. As it was though, I still enjoyed it. I wonder what impact the fact that it was translated had. Did it effect the word choice? Maybe it helped with the somewhat other worldly feeling of the words. I was interested in Polo's discussion of how discussing a memory makes it fade away, and that in talking about something similar, but not the same we preserve it. This makes sense, if you think about how memories can change the more you talk about them. I wouldn't say they fade, but they do get altered with false detail. Perhaps Polo is doing the opposite-adding false detail it a fake memory to keep it from being altered in his mind.
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