The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Rating:
Summary: I find the writing a bit dry...
Review: ... but I'm such an avid Tarot fan that I still recommend this to others who want to see his treatment of the subject.
Naturally, the Tarot is interpretated differently by almost everyone who indulges. But, hey!... that's the point of studying it as far as I'm concerned.

Definitely check this one out!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent example of story telling using tarot cards
Review: As a tarot cards reader, I really loved this book.

The book contain two similar stories - a group of people meet in an isolated place, and having lost the ability to speak, tell their stories using tarot cards.

I've found the stories interesting as examples of story telling with tarot cards, though going through the idea a second time in the second story didn't make as interesting a reading as the first story.

Regretably, the Hebrew translation contains poor reproductions of the decks with which the stories are told, which is doubly sad considering how beutiful the Visconti-Sforza deck is. As the first edition went out of print, I hope an improved second edition will be printed soon...

Rating:
Summary: Amusing for more than a few reasons...
Review: I'm a beginner at reading Italian literature, but there's a few amusing things Calvino did here...he took pivotal scenes from classic literature that includes the poetic epic Orlando in Love and characters of Shakesphere, works of Renaissance literature, and rematched them to the minature art of the time, tarocchi game cards.
I recognize excerpts of human passions from the poetry epic of Orlando in Love from Matteo Maria Boiardo, the Ferarra count, poet and storyteller for the D'Estes clan in the 1470s in the Castle of Crossed Destinies. Calvino also took parts of the Arthurian romantic tales that Boiardo, Aristo and other courtly poets and 'rematched' them to the trump and other cards of the classic Italian tarocchi. I say rematched, as Boiardo and other poets/artists of D'Estes family members did allegorical praising in their poems or paintings that included direct or thinly disguised praises to their patrons. The patrons appear as romantic heroes amid Greco-Roman, Arthurian or other mythic landscapes. The D'Estes and Visconti-Sforzas were related through marriages and both sets of families have historical tarocchi card sets---but it is the "completed" set from the Milanese Visconti-Sforzas that we are familiar with now.
I thought that I recognized a few of the fictional scenes that Calvino presented from Renaissance sources.

Rating:
Summary: clever, but not engaging
Review: Italo Calvino's an author I've enjoyed for years, devouring his strange narratives. Reading The Castle of Crossed Destinies for the first time I feel like someone's torn the carpet from under my feet: I'm disappointed. Yes, it's "ingenious", as a back cover excerpt from a New Yorker review states, but it's not gripping or enthralling or a good read. The genius of this book lies in its structure, in the way it's been created. This is a book of stories interpreted or laid over patterns found in tarot cards placed on a table in criss-crossing patterns. Stories read horisontally and vertically like words in crossword puzzle.

As concept art or an experiment in narrativity this is ingenious. I love it. But it's not just concept art. (Ah, and I realise that "just" is dodgy. I'm not quite sure where it might lead.) This is a book. Books are meant to be read. This ingenious structure results in dull, uninspired stories. I'm exhausted after two: I've seen the structure (concept, gimmick) and I'm sated.

The concept is cool but then what? Is a gimmick enough? I suppose that depends on what you want. I mostly want more.

Rating:
Summary: cult novel that is a literary masterpiece
Review: Just as the tarot card reading unfolds in the story, this book has innumerable levels that beg for thought and interpretation: it is part historical novel, part fortune-telling, and part a history of the great classics of western civilization. It is also a fascinating experiment in expanding the literary vehicle, adding the dimension of the cards - functioning as kind of symbolic building blocks as well as a springboard for association - that creates a parallel narrative to the gorgeous descriptive power of the work. Calvino, I feel, has created a work as complex and rich as the best of Nabokov. As with all truly great novels, there is a great deal left unsaid, that the reader can mull over if she so chooses. While the vocabulary was very difficult for my primitive Italian, it was as beautifully written as Calvino's other work.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: cult novel that is a literary masterpiece
Review: Just as the tarot card reading unfolds in the story, this book has innumerable levels that beg for thought and interpretation: it is part historical novel, part fortune-telling, and part a history of the great classics of western civilization. It is also a fascinating experiment in expanding the literary vehicle, adding the dimension of the cards - functioning as kind of symbolic building blocks as well as a springboard for association - that creates a parallel narrative to the gorgeous descriptive power of the work. Calvino, I feel, has created a work as complex and rich as the best of Nabokov. As with all truly great novels, there is a great deal left unsaid, that the reader can mull over if she so chooses. While the vocabulary was very difficult for my primitive Italian, it was as beautifully written as Calvino's other work.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Shifting identities
Review: Of the four books I have read by Calvino(all to be highly recommended for anyone who does not wish to be allowed to read passively, and who also is looking for something that will "delight in the re-reading", as well as the surprise in the new), "Castle" most adopts a particular structure to present a tale of shifting identities, as do his other novels. Knowledge of the Canterbury Tales is helpful, but Calvino makes sure it sits in the background and does not dominate his readings. I use "readings", if you must know, because this is the strucutre of the novel-a series of tarot card readings of a group of travelers who stop in this castle. The stories are wonderful, in the proud Italian tradition of Boccacio, Petrarch, and Chauser(who learned all he could fropm his Italian masters), and his modern master Borges, and the framing device, is interesting and used subtly and skillfully. If you don't have questions about the nature of narratives and fictions, and about the way those answers implicate how a human subject understands reality or comes to it, "Castle" may not be for you, as you may get bogged down in it's introverted labyrinthine reflections. If Borges' metaphysical fariy tales are your cup of tea, it here runneth over.

Rating:
Summary: Response to criticisms
Review: One of the above mentioned reviewers thought the execution to be vague in its style and not the work of indepth thought, perhaps though it takes a certain degree of ingenious to see such possibilities from a pack of tarot cards, to me it sounded like he spent some time figuring out how to best execute it from the after note and in particular its final comment on how he wishes each time he sits down to write a book to be writing as if for the first time sums up Calvino as a writer, his approaches are constantly varied and always breath-takingly original. As I have found European writers in particular are able to take novels to another level of experience, manipulate the form to create something original and classic. The novel reads like a classic and seems timeless in its setting and execution and follows a Canterbury Tales theme, there are occasionally hints here and there that it is a modern writer, in one tale the mention of technology like computers seemed out of place and alerts you to the fact that is recent. To best read this you need plenty of time to enjoy it, the steam of conscious style demands your attention as do the tales, some original, some based on classical legends. A well worthwhile read

Rating:
Summary: Good, but vaguely executed
Review: The Castle of Crossed destinies uses tarot cards as a medium of communication to imaginatively narrate several stories. While I enjoyed the book and the idea, Calvino's description of how he was inspired to write in this way makes it seem that he merely came up with a neat idea and quickly executed it - without much deliberation. I wanted to feel that the book was more than the result of an intellegent, charming writer's Sunday afternoon.