Some rare comments on prose.
One of my favorite books by Italo Calvino is his environmental classic Marcovaldo. Environmental? Yes, environmental, and yes, a classic because of its distinct take on having a protagonist who tries to be an urban environmentalist though poor and surrounded by a family. As Americans, we don’t often see this perspective portrayed. We have Thoreau in his cabin, Muir in his woods, and Abbey ranting in the desert. They are inspiring; they inspire us to leave our cramped quarters and head for the outdoors, but what happens when that’s not so easy to do, when throwing your goods to the wind would mean leaving a child hungry or just leaving a mate?
In our cities, one often hears “I wish I could get away to nature for a few days,” and Marcovaldo, the protagonist of this collection of stories, takes this idea as a credo, but his ideas—romantic ideals—are often frustrated by his experiences with work, family, and reality. For example, when he sees mushrooms growing near a tram stop, he waits for them to get large enough so that he can feed his family. Without any knowledge, he becomes an expert on “nature” only because he notices the mushrooms that others pass by, but this misreading of nature is a common effect of a distance from nature. Since he knows wilderness, he is only familiar with nature as he perceives it, as a construct—he doesn’t know the wild; therefore, when he eats and convinces others to eat the mushrooms, he and several others end up in a hospital from poison mushrooms.
Interestingly, Calvino doesn’t blame Marcovaldo for his romantic environmentalism. Even though Marcovaldo is a comic character, Calvino portrays him tenderly, for we are allowed to see how life has changed around him and for future generations through the stories involving his children. For instance, in “The Forest on the Highway,” Marcovaldo’s children cut down billboards for wood because they need firewood and they only know that wood come from forests. Without ever having seen a forest, they assume the billboards constitute a forest because of the amount of wood gathered in close proximity. Having grown up in a city, they only know nature in its packaged form—they are disconnected from knowledge of it. As modern capitalists, this disconnection is familiar. We live through packaged goods and can barely recognize the plants on our daily routes.
One might object that it’s hard to know what nature is, what wilderness is versus wild, because humans have altered nature so significantly in the last two hundred or so years. Calvino addresses this idea by sending Marcovaldo fishing on a rare day away from family and work, but his trip takes a dramatic twist when we find his clean fishing spot only appears blue and wonderful because of a paint factory dumping chemicals into the river just above where he is fishing. His entire catch, though seemingly fine, must be discarded due to pollution.
With his misdirected desires, with his lack of knowing he lacks environmental knowledge, Marcovaldo is a more realistic example of how many of us live in our cities. Looking around, I see many more people like Marcovaldo than Thoreau, than Muir.
One of my favorite books by Italo Calvino is his environmental classic Marcovaldo. Environmental? Yes, environmental, and yes, a classic because of its distinct take on having a protagonist who tries to be an urban environmentalist though poor and surrounded by a family. As Americans, we don’t often see this perspective portrayed. We have Thoreau in his cabin, Muir in his woods, and Abbey ranting in the desert. They are inspiring; they inspire us to leave our cramped quarters and head for the outdoors, but what happens when that’s not so easy to do, when throwing your goods to the wind would mean leaving a child hungry or just leaving a mate?
In our cities, one often hears “I wish I could get away to nature for a few days,” and Marcovaldo, the protagonist of this collection of stories, takes this idea as a credo, but his ideas—romantic ideals—are often frustrated by his experiences with work, family, and reality. For example, when he sees mushrooms growing near a tram stop, he waits for them to get large enough so that he can feed his family. Without any knowledge, he becomes an expert on “nature” only because he notices the mushrooms that others pass by, but this misreading of nature is a common effect of a distance from nature. Since he knows wilderness, he is only familiar with nature as he perceives it, as a construct—he doesn’t know the wild; therefore, when he eats and convinces others to eat the mushrooms, he and several others end up in a hospital from poison mushrooms.
Interestingly, Calvino doesn’t blame Marcovaldo for his romantic environmentalism. Even though Marcovaldo is a comic character, Calvino portrays him tenderly, for we are allowed to see how life has changed around him and for future generations through the stories involving his children. For instance, in “The Forest on the Highway,” Marcovaldo’s children cut down billboards for wood because they need firewood and they only know that wood come from forests. Without ever having seen a forest, they assume the billboards constitute a forest because of the amount of wood gathered in close proximity. Having grown up in a city, they only know nature in its packaged form—they are disconnected from knowledge of it. As modern capitalists, this disconnection is familiar. We live through packaged goods and can barely recognize the plants on our daily routes.
One might object that it’s hard to know what nature is, what wilderness is versus wild, because humans have altered nature so significantly in the last two hundred or so years. Calvino addresses this idea by sending Marcovaldo fishing on a rare day away from family and work, but his trip takes a dramatic twist when we find his clean fishing spot only appears blue and wonderful because of a paint factory dumping chemicals into the river just above where he is fishing. His entire catch, though seemingly fine, must be discarded due to pollution.
With his misdirected desires, with his lack of knowing he lacks environmental knowledge, Marcovaldo is a more realistic example of how many of us live in our cities. Looking around, I see many more people like Marcovaldo than Thoreau, than Muir.
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