Baron in the Trees

This book immediately became my favorite novel that took me into the world of uninhibited dreams and actualizing an idea that is so coveted as a child, I would have loved to escape all the responsibilities of the world that was inevitable as I grew up and just live in the trees and travel the world this way. this book just transforms your mind into a brave little boy learning to cope with the reality that is his conflicted political inevitable demise.

This is truly a work celebrating that individual call to be who you want to be. But to do so, not in the way that gives up on the world, or attacks the world, but that stays unapologetically you in the face of the world while still being part of it. This was an amazing work.

Never underestimate Italo Calvino, for what you think you are reading may turn out to be something else entirely from your original impressions. That is the case with the relatively short novel, The Baron in the Trees. It is true that I found it enchanting in the beginning and several chapters captured that enchantment, but there are sections that seem totally irrelevant to the plot and by the time I finished the book, I realized it really had no plot. It is an intellectual exercise disguised as a parable. Or is it a long parable disguised as an intellectual exercise? It offers an alternative reality based on our historic reality. Calvino takes an illogical premise that a young man decides at age 12 to life the rest of his life in the trees, and then constructs a world of detail around that premise, thus keeping the reader in a state of suspension. The narrator is the younger brother to the Baron who observes and relates to us what he sees, what he interprets, and sometimes the inner motivations of the other characters. It is the love affair between Cosimo, the Baron in the trees, and Viola, his childhood girlfriend and adult lover that is the peak or climax of the story for all energy and action leads to this point and the recedes from their affair. Despite the young narrator observations and interpretations, the Baron remained a mystery for me and I finally came to the conclusion that he is the ultimate outsider, the one who sees all human society and social constructions from a philosophical distance. Yet, it is passion an love for Viola that causes Cosimo to lose the perspective of the outsider and to be bound in his passions and desires. The character of Viola is fascinating for as a child she pits boy against boy and as a woman she pits man against man. Yet Calvino has a fascinating interpretation of why she uses jealous against the man she loves most in her life. Enough said, for this is a critical part of the book I don't want to spoil for other readers. It is a long parable about choosing to be an outsider, to look at the reset of humanity from a distance, and yet to be bound by the human passions that bound all of us. It is a long parable because there is much in human existence to explore. About every five pages Calvino offers a charming and sometimes enchanting comment or observation or description that reveals him to be the master of irony and abstraction. If you are ready for an author to play games with your expectations, read it.

Do you remember climbing trees, as a child? When I was a child, our neighborhood was full of giant elms that grew into a massive arch that turned our street into a leafy tunnel. I'd climb up on the lower branches, and dream about being brave enough to climb to the very top of the tree.I imagined building tree houses, where my friends I I could camp out high in the trees, our own special places where grownups were not allowed. Italo Calvino imagines Cosimo, a boy from a family of minor nobles of the late 18th Century who one day takes to the trees in an act of rebellion against his family, vowing never to set foot on the Earth again. He keeps his promise, traveling to foreign lands, falling in love, corresponding with Voltaire and Diderot and other great minds of his day, participating in the intellectual and the revolutionary movements. Cosimo's younger brother narrates the story of how the young baron took to the trees, and what became of him. Italo Calvino uses his gifts in storytelling and description to create a world in which a preposterous notion becomes commonplace. The most preposterous characters and events can seem ordinary as Calvino describes them. Cosimo's mother, a German woman known as "the Generalessa," spend her time doing embroidery, but not of the sort you'd expect. "The lace and embroidery were usually in the designs of geographical maps; our mother would stretch them over cushions or tapestry and stick in pins and tiny flags, showing the disposition of battles in the Wars of Succession, which she knew by heart..." There is also Battista, the sister of Cosimo and our narrator, "a kind of stay at home nun," confined to the castle after a questionable encounter with a young noble, who dresses in a nun's wimple and takes her revenge on the family by preparing exquisite yet inedible dishes. Cosimo's uncle (the illegitimate brother of the Duke) dresses in Turkish robes and a fez and busies himself looking after the legal affair of the family and making complex plans for canals and hydraulic systems that will never be built. Next door is a family with whom Cosimo's family has been feuding, and they have a young daughter- but beyond that you'll have to read the book for yourself. This is Calvino at his best, the teller of fabulous tales and a crafter of exquisite sentences who can catapult the reader far up into the trees, and beyond.

The concept behind The Baron in the Trees is brilliant. I'm not so sure that the story itself is. Readers will find the idea haunts them and follows them around. Could a man really spend his whole life living in the branches of the trees? And what does that mean? Is it a metaphor for a life of intellectualism? Does it mean he died on the day he left the Earth? Is it a rejection of Earthly and mortal matters for the spiritual? This is left open, and I expect that I will spend years turning the story over in my head and again and again changing my mind about which suits my tastes best. But I think that the book does have a major flaw. Throughout it's 217 pages we follow the life of the Baron with the eyes of his brother. Most of the events are not exciting, not really. They are not memorable. I won't turn them over in my head. I don't even expect to remember them in a year, with the possible exception of the Baron's final poetic death scene. The story could have been 20 pages. And I'm sorry to say that, but we have an example here of an author having one brilliant, transcendently brilliant idea, but sadly only the one. I felt that I was meant to spend the rest of the book basking in that idea, and I suppose I did... But any story told in 217 pages which would be no weaker if told in 20 is flawed. Again, I expect to remember the beginning and the end of this story many years from now, but the middle is fading even now....Wait! Wait!.... and I'm afraid it's gone...... EDIT: It's May 2011 and I don't actually remember the ending anymore after all....

Great book, great quality

Hey, I'm a Calvino fan. I've read Baron in the Trees several times. And needed to replace my english version old paperback falling apart. I'm reading it again because I just found out it was a political allegory. Who knew? Just thought it was a good story of beating to your own drum. I guess I'm going to brush up on my European political history. In that light, it'll go on the shelf next to Candide.

Interesting book but it needs illustrations