Calvino’s Quickness

My interpretation of Calvino’s definition of quickness is basically the most effective and economical way of telling whatever story you are telling.  This doesn’t necessarily mean the fastest way of telling the story, and relative periods of time have to be taken into consideration (the period of time over which the story takes place versus the period of time over which the story is told).  There are certain elements authors use in telling their stories to help tell them effectively and economically, so the quality of quickness is achieved.  An example of this, Calvino points out, is using both a narrative and verbal link to hold a chain of events together, and stressing repetition so the reader anticipates the repeated situation or phrase.

Grounding Calvino’s definition of quickness in my eperience with print literature, I find this quality evident in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.  Burnett’s 1911 novel is about an orphaned girl who is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, England.  During her time at her uncle’s manor, she, her sickly cousin, and another local boy discover a hidden garden in the manor’s yard and it both physically and emotionally heals the characters in the novel.  The garden without a doubt serves as the narrative link, connecting the progress of each character and continuously bringing the characters together.  There are several verbal links as well throughout the novel.  The garden is constantly described as “brightening” the characters, “reviving” them, etc.  What the garden is described as doing for the characters is a verbal link.  Also, there are words that describe each character’s personality throughout the book as well.  Mary is repeatedly described as plain and surly, but is described less so as the book progresses and the garden transforms her.  The reader looks forward to repeated visits with Dickon, the boy Mary meets, and their repeated trips to the garden.

Mary and Dickon

Calvino’s Lightness

What Calvino highlights about lightness is that 1) it is defined by its opposite: heaviness and the burden of living helps define what lightness means,  2) the method of lightness is indirect, and 3) there are dimensions of lightness, the most important being lightness of thought.  Calvino illustrates this lightness of thought by evoking Boccaccio’s poet Cavalcante leaping over a grave; literally leaping over death.  To me, lightness is really all about lightness of thought.  If you are thinking lightly, then you are going to achieve lightness indirectly and will escape the burden and heaviness of living.  Lightness is about helping the reader feel light enough that they dissolve into the fiction and really connect to the characters and story.

Lightness is embodied in the Thursday Next book series (beginning with The Eyre Affair) by Jasper Fforde.  In the series, the protagonist learns to “read herself into books,” by thinking a certain way and reading a certain way, and then transporting herself inside of a work of literature.  In the first novel, she spends the majority of her time in Bronte’s Jane Eyre.  In Lost in a Good Book, Thursday takes the place of a character in an unpublished novel through the “character exchange program”.  I think in order for Fforde to accomplish the effect of Thursday reading herself into a book, she must have lightness of thought; it is indirect because she is reading from a section of the book she wants to jump into in order to get there, and it is a literal representation of leaving the heaviness/burden of real life and leaping into a lighter, fantasy, fictional world.

Flash Video about the Thursday Next series