GatesyRead

Under the Jaguar Sun was published posthumously in 1986 in Italian and 1988 in English, with Calvino passing in 1985, aged 62. Ether Calvino’s note relays that Calvino began the book in 1972, with only three of the stories finished (published here). A few days before he fell ill, Calvino had written about the idea of the framing device (here the five senses) – ‘We consider poetic a production in which each individual experience acquires prominence through its detachment from the general continuum, while it retains a kind of glint of that unlimited vastness’ (p.86). How I would like to hear more! The title story ‘Under the Jaguar Sun’ is set in Oaxaca, Mexico (a city I once visited and loved). The narrator and his wife Olivia are visiting Mexico and while their love life is muted, their sense of taste is a sensual delight. The narrator speaks of his desire for oneness: ‘Our subjective, individual selves … find their amplification and completion only in the unity of the couple’. Yet in t