These two stories, or fables, are mystical and magical, yet utterly earthy and grounded in the physicalities of human experience. They will make you laugh and cry as you find your own fears and longings deciphered somehow, in these pages. To read and re-read.

3.5

I enjoy his stories and his medieval literature influences.

I think what I like about Calvino is that his novels feel like the work of a man who finds so much joy in reading and imagination and tries to write novels that capture that feeling. I don't think there's ever any agenda with him, other than to give the simple pleasure of reading.

Like The Baron in the Trees, this feels like a fairy tale in the best sense. Fantastic events are treated as being barely out of the ordinary and the impossible feels logical. I also like how the prejudices and superstitions of the era they take place in are portrayed as objective fact. And I love how he uses a historical base to go off in the most non-historical directions possible.

As a standalone work, it's fine. But for anyone interested in the progression of Calvino's writing, it's a precious artifact linking his early sentimental realism (e.g. The Path to the Nest of Spiders) to the genre-dodging works for which he's best known.

Neither of these hit the highs that Baron in the Trees did for me, but both real solid pieces of satire. Managed to remind me of both Barthelme and The Decameron. Calvino’s catalogue is a real treasure trove

Calvino is one of my favorite writers of all time and these novellas definitely didn’t disappoint. They were humorous, whimsical, and drew me in in a way that no author besides Calvino can. Really good

These two short novels, along with The Baron in the Trees, are part of Calvino's Our Ancestors trilogy from the 1950s. They represent Calvino turning away from the neorealism of The Path to the Nest of Spiders, his first novel, to incorporate elements of fantasy and folklore. This is still not the mature Calvino, but if you like his later works, they are worth exploring.

The Nonexistent Knight--3 1/2 stars. The last of the trilogy to be published and perhaps the most successful. It's kind of like Monty Python meets Cervantes. Characters from history (Charlemagne) and myth (the Knights of the Holy Grail) intermingle in a whimsical fable set during the crusades, narrated by a cloistered nun. The story is somewhat dated due to Calvino's casual male chauvinism, which makes the female characters less interesting than they could have been.

The Cloven Viscount--2 stars. The first and worst of the trilogy. Calvino starts out with an utterly absurd idea, that the main character was literally divided in half by cannon fire and both halves miraculously survived to live independent lives, one good and one evil. OK, fine. But Calvino does very little with this premise throughout the meandering plot and all the characters are just shallow social types. The humor is very strained. It reminds me of bad Salman Rushdie (who was of course influenced by Calvino). The book is only 100 pages long but it was a chore to finish. It might have worked better as a 20-page story or children's book, like something by William Steig.

nonexistent knight: 3
cloven viscount: 4

"The Nonexistent Knight" is a fairly clever satire of war that eventually wears out its welcome, but "The Cloven Viscount" is something better: a haunting fable that will stay with me. In any case, this is a quick read and well worth your time.

A nice philosophical-fantasy. None of the characters are whole, but they are all giving it their best (or at least fulfilling their roles).

Some of Calvino's best work! You can really see how the folktales he was collecting in this era impacted his writing. Unlike his earlier works (The Path to the Nest of Spiders and The Crow Comes Last), his writing here is light and playful even when dealing with series topics. Everyone makes a note of this, I think, but Calvino is always at least quietly funny; and while "The Nonexistent Knight" is more upfront about its humor, the more subdued humor in "The Cloven Viscount" sometimes really got to me! Specifically he has a passage about the evil halved viscount leaving behind a trail of halved flowers and animals, including "half a frog on a rock, still alive and jumping with the vitality of frogs." For some reason that line killed me!

Another small thing that brought a lot of joy from this reading was the way that Calvino introduced the narrators of each story. Both are introduced a few chapters in, after much of the establishing work is done. He uses these narrators to great ends in both stories--both as a rumination on the limits of writing in "The Nonexistent Knight" and as a central plot point in "The Cloven Viscount." Being written earlier, "Viscount" did actually remind me more of Calvino's The Path to the Nest of Spiders, both in terms of their common younger narrators and somewhat bleaker tone. Like I mentioned above, though, neither of these stories are ever so bleak as to make you want to put the book down, unlike some of his earlier work!

I dunno, the first story was good but the second one was kinda slow and I wasn't really engaged.