The Watcher and Other Stories (Harbrace Paperbound Library)

£9.9
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The Watcher and Other Stories (Harbrace Paperbound Library)

The Watcher and Other Stories (Harbrace Paperbound Library)

RRP: £99
Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

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Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. But there is a moment, beforehand, when the election officials are alone, sitting there counting the pencils, a moment that rends the heart. The title story involves Amerigo, a rather naive young Communist who is employed as a "Watcher" at a hospital; he keeps an eye on the patients to make sure they are all aware enough to vote.

Então, de todas as coisas o que conta seria apenas o momento em que começam, quando todas as energias estão retesadas, quando só existe o futuro? Like Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino dreams perfect dreams for us" (John Updike, New Yorker). The general picture, then, which Calvino develops is that of a “two‐headed” society whose Battle of the Books—between the Bible and the works of the young Marx— ends, for most men, in a dead lock. In the title story, an Italian Communist poll watcher is stationed at a hospital in Turin, where nuns guide the hands of invalids to their preferred candidate in a special election.A strong three stars; I really liked these scenarios and stories and the perspective Calvino brings, they just fall into the same bleak / miserable / misanthropic zone that makes it tough for me to get into Beckett and Nabakov and such. As these charges are the responsibility of the recipient, please check the customs service in your destination country to see if charges are applicable. Front board has a 3/8 inch abrasion and a 1/8 inch light stain on edge of top board--both visible in last photo. Its essence, Calvino demon strates, is that the labor of pes simistic optimists such as the Communist Ormea and the op timistic pessimists of the Church and the conservative political parties yields the possibility of a city grander and more hu mane than either the Cot tolengo complex or Turin itself.

In "The Watcher," a member of the Communist Party is assigned to a polling place in Turin's Hospital for Incurables, where he observes the rejects of humanity and a grotesque parody of the democratic process. Its outline was irregular, a body that had become gradually extended through new bequests and constructions and enterprises: from over the walls rose the roofs of buildings, spires, treetops, and smokestacks.

Book fine; jacket slightly rubbed, with some mild creasing and one small closed tear, but still very good. In the 1950's and 1960's the underlying problem was described as pollution (which was more easily identifiable and measurable), as opposed to global warming or climate change.

And so, in his memory, he began to contrast the scene before his eyes with the atmosphere of Italy after the liberation, in those few years whose most vivid recollection now was the way everyone had taken part in political affairs and actions, in the problems of that moment, serious and elemental (these were thoughts of the present: then he had lived as if the atmosphere of those times was natural, as everyone did, enjoying it—after all that had happened—angry at things that were wrong, without ever thinking they could be set right); he remembered how people looked then, all of them seeming equally poor, and interested in universal questions more than in private ones; he remembered the makeshift party offices, . After I finished the "argentine ant" I started to read the other stories, but I did not like them that much.In "Smog" a city dweller experiences the solid celebration of industrial power in an increasingly dangerous cloud of soot. Photo by The original uploader was Varie11 at Italian Wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
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