Week Thirteen : Literary Speculation

OMG! FUN! I absolutely love Italo Calvino’s work. For my concept class, sophomore year, our final project was to create a visual excerpt from one of his novels, Cities and Signs. I focused on an isolated city that he described in his book called Zoe. Here’s a link to that animation if you're interested in checking it out.
This week I read Italo Calvino’s short story, The Distance of the Moon. I thought it was very cute. It reminded me a lot of Pixar’s short animated film, The Moon (La Luna). It also gave me The Little Prince vibes. The story was told in a somewhat fantastical way. What I gathered from the reading was the overwhelming theme of desire and longing but I didn't see it as a requinted love story. The narrator, Qfwfq, speaks openly about his ‘lust’(more like unhealthy infatuation) for the Captain’s wife. He only sees her for her body. Not once did he mention anything about her personality. Even at the end Qfwfq states, “I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remember them now, just as now, when the Moon has become that flat,”. Weird. A bit pervy. I mean, the story can be interperted in multiple ways, but mainly, what I see most is the theme of distance and the act of emotionally and physically drifting apart.
Anyway, I really admire how literary speculation is free of expectations. I'm the type of reader that enjoys when a novel's ending is unforseen, and I put my trust in Calvino to give me that. He doesn't leave his work ‘unfinished’, he leaves it open; open to reader interpretation. I’d say that his work doesn't really fit a certain genre. I admire how Calvino’s literary techniques are inspired by science and how his stories always carry a little twist. He gathers scientific facts and adapts the information into a story, expanding on these extravagant ideas or theories. This makes for an interesting read.
I also watched eXistenZ (1999) dir. David Cronenberg this weekend.  Everything was so… crazy. The ending was… crazy. I had such a difficult time determining what was reality and what was part of the gameplay. The whole thing felt like a lucid fever dream. Why was everything so fleshy? I don't even know how to describe or explain what the film is. I know that the film plays with all sorts of philosophical and psychological themes, but just trying to think of what it all means gives me a MAJOR headache. Derealisation? Depersonalization? Reality vs. perception? The negative psychological and social effects that come from excessive media and technology consumption? I don't know. There’s so many ways you can analyze this film.
…..
Here are some other ‘Literary Speculation’ readings/shows/movies/etc. that I like: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, AND The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

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