The Written World and the Unwritten World

Before I tell you about a book of essays I recently finished, I want you to go to and bookmark De Stiil, a wonderful, independent bookstore in Montreal owned by Aude Le Dubé. All the links here will take you there. Support independent bookstores when you can!

I am a big fan of Italo Calvino. I read Marcovaldo once a year - you should read it at least once. If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller is lovely and The Baron in the Trees will charm you even if you have a heart of stone. And his Italian Folktales are pure magic. There are so many others. All that to say that The Written World and The Unwritten World is not a typical Calvino book and you really do need to be a bit of a fan to get through it, or a Calvino scholar, which might actually be the same thing in some ways. This is a rather uneven collection of letters, essays, notes, lectures, book reviews, and other ephemera Calvino published over the years compiled into a single volume. Among all of that Calvino fandom riches, there are a few true gems.

The essay the collection is named after, The Written World and the Unwritten World, should be a mandatory reading for every photographer (and writer) out there:

“What happens in the world that surrounds me never stops surprising me, frightening me, disorienting me. I’ve witnessed many changes in my lifetime, in the vast world, in society, and many changes in myself, too, and yet I can’t predict anything, not for myself or for the people I know, and even less regarding the future of human race. […] I know very well that I share this ignorance with those who, on the contrary, claim to know; economists, sociologists, politicians. But the fact that I am not alone gives me no comfort. […] I realize how unattainable every idea of wisdom is today. […] Perhaps the first step in renewing a relationship between language and world is the simplest: fix attention on an ordinary object, the most banal and familiar, and describe it minutely, as if it were the newest and most interesting thing in the universe.”

And his essays on books and on why he writes are just as helpful to anybody trying to engage in some way with this world. Read Calvino - it will do you good.