Fleshy Narratives!

Excess, elaborate descriptions of human feelings and all those gushy, lovey-dovey statements are the fleshy attribute to traditional fiction. In stripping away the inessentials and pealing off every useless word one by one, we will begin to see the bones of a work of literary art. This is precisely what postmodern fiction does. Instead of hiding the structure with the unnecessary extras, postmodern fiction "bares instead its structural bones, brings them to the surface, and retires" (page 34, Living by Fiction, Dillard). This can be far more difficult to do than traditional fiction. One must land upon a nearly perfect form and execute it immaculately for postmodern fiction to work. Traditional fiction can skip planning a form and structure and cover it up with beautifully written sentiments.

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is a perfect example of postmodern fiction. The structure, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is astounding. The mathematical pattern of the section numbers, the sine wave or cityscape that arises from these numbers, the well written, yet short, descriptions of cities placed in a well planned order. If he had written with any other form or chosen any other structure for the book, he very well would have failed and been forgotten over the years. To return to the bodily description of postmodern fiction, the bones would be his mathematical structure for the book which is shown so clearly. (What I find even more interesting is that, even if one should miss this structure while reading Invisible Cities for the first time, they will lose no respect for the writer. The style of writing is so easy to read, allowing one to simply flow through the pages with ease, shows his genius.) The poetic writing style is like the torso, the center of the structure or bones. Not to sound too cliche, but the beauty of his writing is in perfect contrast to the mathematical, more harsh structure of the book. This supports the structure and gives it more interest. The conversations between Kublai Kan and Marco Polo are the soft, light flesh making the book into a novel, creating a sense of time. This flesh isn't near thick enough to hide the bones. It is extremely thin, only thick enough to hold the bones together.

Invisible Cities has been my favorite reading and I am sad to watch it slowly pass over the horizon. I now, however, begin to dust off Othello and open the crisp pages to read it once again. I am sure many posts will come as I delve into the mind of Shakespeare!