A sight-reading of Italo Calvino’s “All At One Point,” a note to Possible World theory

Here (X), right there, marks a bite in the ass, mine of course, for waiting to write reflections. I now attempt to reflect on a sight-reading of Calvino’s “All At One Point,” a post-modern story that in five pages depicts otherworldliness and absurdity. It's a whirlwind to be sure. Here is the danger: I do this for the audience of my classmates and Dr. Busl, who wrote her dissertation on the narrative structure of Calvino. Here we go.

            Before we begin to read the narrative, the title and the epigraph offer a setting and a foundation. The epigraph describes Edwin P. Hubble’s calculations of “the galaxies’ velocity of recession,” calculations of this recession offer a “moment” when all matter was “concentrated in a single point” (43), thus “All At One Point.” The narrator, Qfwfq, begins with “Naturally” (43), an opening that by design we must question. But, the reader is then thrust into a world that immediately seems anything but natural, a world without time. The narrator, Qfwfq, also questions space, “Nobody knew there could be space” (43). How does a narrative work in a setting so outside our own actual world, a world without time and space? Thomas Pavel suggests that in creating an APW, the text establishes “a new actual world which imposes its own laws on the surrounding system. . . In order to become immersed in this world, the reader must adopt a new ontological perspective” (Ryan 3.1.2). Calvino creates this APW that seems out of reach, but he hangs it on the masterplot of a creation story. And so it works. Although there are multiple characters, time and space for much of the narration is centered upon one point. There are enough hallmarks of this masterplot, though, that we find comfort in the recognizable and can therefore immerse ourselves. If not during the first read, the second. The concepts of time and space become realized upon the expansion of the point, caused by the generosity of Mrs. Ph(i)Nk₀s. And another APW, one that more closely resembles our own, is created.

            Should I have written “bum”?

Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Possible Worlds.” the living handbook of narratology. Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology, University of Hamburg, 27 Sept. 2013. Web. 15 Feb. 2015.