Under the Jaguar Sun

As the author's widow explains in the epilogue, Italo Calvino once got it into his head to write a book about the five senses. He dabbled on and off in this project until he died, producing three short stories. With his usual magical delicacy, Calvino explored taste, hearing and smell with a rare skill. The title story tells of a young couple vacationing in Mexico, where they explore ancient ruins, hear of the history of Oaxaca, and discover new erotic dimensions as they try the local food -- spicy, rich, and almost intoxicating, the food helps link them back to one another. "A King Listens" is a more experiment story, with no real plot and a second-person narrative ("You are the king; everything you desire is already yours"). A king sits on his throne, alone in a giant hall, alienated from most of his palace and everyone in it. But he hears a woman singing, strange whispers, a prisoner scrabbling against a wall, and much more, which are his roads to the outside world. "The Name, the Nose" is a tragic tale in the tradition of Poe, but in more lush language. A man danced with a masked lady at a ball, falling madly in love with her -- but he can only identify her by her perfume. He desperately searches a parfumerie for the right scent, thinking of the night when he met her... and is shocked when he discovers where she is, and who the masked figure with her is. Italo Calvino was obviously a guy who liked to dabble in magical realism, and "theme books" -- tarot cards, magical cities, and the unfolding of the universe. So it's a shame that he never finished "Under the Jaguar Sun." While delightful as a collection, it makes you think of how wonderful "Sight" and "Touch" would have been. And the way he writes is suitable to each story -- the first is hot and passionate, the second is steady and slightly dull, and the last one is ornate, gothic and blue. Calvino even drops some hints as to what the stories should be about, even when it's obvious; the king in the second story even describes his palace as "all whorls, lobes; it is a great ear." Subtle, huh? But he can't hold back his natural flair for description in any of these stories. Even though sight isn't explored in this book, we get intricate descriptions of ballrooms, rock orgies, and "a theatre-church, all gold and bright colours, in a dancing and acrobatic baroque, crammed with swirling angels, garlands, panoplies of flowers, shells." His prose can be almost intoxicating. Calvino's stories about three of the senses are all beautiful, each in a unique, spellbinding way. A must-read for lovers of the magical-realist maestro.

In an afterword note, Esther Calvino asks the reader to think of this book as "not something Calvino started and left unfinished but simply as three stories written in different periods of his life." She gives good advice, but the sense that Calvino had something more, something bigger, planned for these stories pervades this tiny book. He definitely wanted to write a book about the five senses and interweave them in some way (as he did with other themes in previous books). In all of these stories the senses mingle sensuously with desire and sensuality (one can only imagine what he had in mind for the sense of touch). Here sense catalyzes desire, hidden desires, nameless primordial desires. But this book only contains a scratching of a surface, a deep misty lake that promises more. Unfortunately Calvino died before wrapping up the project. So here remains a sketch of what might have been. Sadly, stories published posthumously always seem to have a certain "not quite final draft" feel about them. Here sits another example. Regardless, plenty of good Calvino exists here for ardent fans of his work. 1982's "Under The Jaguar Sun" is a great story about a couple vacationing in México. Taste awakens forbidden desires (the story begins with a very suggestive description of a "love" between a priest and a nun). The couple explore the ruins of ancient México, the local food (now an amalgam of national cuisines), and each other's bodies and psyches as they rip and tear their lusciously spiced food. But forbidden desires arise once again as they explore the history of human sacrifice and realize that eating mingles deeply with the sensual and the forbidden. "A King Listens", dated 1984, speaks to the reader in second person (sometimes in a manner similar to "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler"). The king sits on his lonely throne trapped by necessity in his own palace. All he knows of the surroundings are sounds. They reverberate, echo, and thud all around him. Paranoid thoughts about the inevitable usurpation stew with the sounds. Suddenly a woman's voice sings out, but he can only hear her. He wants to experience her as a person, not just a voice. Which leads to one of the best lines in the story: "And so, when a desire to be fulfilled presents itself to you at last, you realize that being king is of no use for anything." The senses again awaken desire. "The Name, the Nose", from 1972, switches contexts abruptly between a French parfumerie (where the saleswomen erotically encircle the cherished patron), the dank smoky aftermath of a rock concert, and a battle between two early humans (this episode evokes "Cosmicomics"). All of the men in the story come to know a woman only by her smell. The singular smell of each woman ignites desires. Strange ineffable and mad desires. The story itself remains a little indescribable. So taste, hearing, and smell all get represented here as awakening desire or as a source of desire. And desire weaves through this book

I think that these three short stories act as a study on perception and awareness. Each story embodies a sense: In the first story, "Under The Jaguar Sun," Calvino writes about the sense of taste; in the second, "A King Listens," he writes about the sense of hearing; and finally, in "The Name, The Nose," he writes about the olfactory sense. Reading all three in sequence, the stories take on the texture of a novella (Calvino, unfortunately, died before he could complete two more stories of senses).Each story is entirely different. What I enjoyed about the second story is the Poe-like ("The Pit And The Pendulum") Dostoyevsky-esque ("Notes From The Underground") nature of a King's interior monologue of living as a monarch. The Palace becomes corporeal and the mannerisms of regality become personality traits. But what the king hears takes him into his own thoughts, leading him into an implosion of spirit.Pick it up if your are a Calvino fan. If not, reading it might be a good way to become a Calvino fan.

The ear, the smell and the taste (unluckily Calvino died before writing the other two) give place to three incredible stories. After reading this book you will discover that the human organs are more than just that. The senses are not just instruments to go around in life, if we take them to their highest consequenses life appears to be completely different, new, renewed. This book it's a must!!!!