Gather Catastrophe: And Other Stories Constructed By Dino Buzzati Contained In Copy
and dark at times, whimsical at others, this collection of stories first published inand recently reissued inwith a terrific new foreword by Kevin Brockmeier was completely engaging.
If Rod Serling and Italo Calvino had an artificial love child, Buzzati might be it, Id never heard of him until I came across mention of his story “Seven Floors” in an essay on aging, And yes, theres even a story called “The Epidemic”, Highly recommended. An excellent anthology! A varied collection of stories is presented here, mostly involving some sort of catastrophe, The stories, ranging from the suspenseful to the otherworldly, are all unique and imaginative, I don't think I have seen any anthology as fantastical as this one, Most of the time the ending is some sort of catastrophe, but in other cases all ends well, Some other times it is left open, You just never know what to expect,
A lot of the stories are delightfully kafkaesque, with the oppressive reality and the inevitable disaster always looming over our heads, The sense of helplessness and hopelessness is palpable, making for a real suspenseful pageturner,
Some of the stories are bizarre, with unexpected and totally unnatural endings, Even though they border on fantasy, they not only are entertaining on their own, but also set up a world/anthology were anything can happen,
Overall, this is a must read for fans of suspense and the bizarre, Absolutely stunning! I am starting to have mixed feelings about Buzzati, I obtained this book due to the necessity of reading two, quite rightly, very highlyregarded stories "Catastrophe" and "Seven Floors" which are included herein and are not included elsewhere in his other collections available in the English language and which I've previously read viz Restless Nights and The Siren.
Those two stories I've cited are excellent and well worth the price of purchase, But Buzzati is so hitandmiss for me that I can't help feeling that it would be better if a single volume appeared containing only the essential pieces.
Too often I feel as if I am making allowances for the much lesser efforts in view of the admittedly much more meritorious ones, Do we judge an author by his very best work or by his work as a totality
Four for the two I've mentioned anyway.
They are, at least, superlative, kafka if he lived through fascist italy and then named
every character after a pasta dish or "sbrinzel"
for the writing andbonus for featuring a fucked up little bat creature with the power to level city blocks Given the universal passion for the writing of Calvino and Kafka, it's a bit of a shocker why Buzzati isn't recognized.
These are dark fables and tales of bureaucratic horror and individual dread that should be far, far more widely read than they are, Take Seven Floors. Imagine, if you will, Gregor Samsa or Josef K with a nasty skin problem, and imagine what would happen if they went on WebMD, And then what would happen if shit got very real from there on out, In Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world.
In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence,
From “The Epidemic,” which traces the gradual effects of a “state influenza” that targets those who disagree with the government, to “The Collapse of Baliverna,” where a man puzzles over whether a misstep on his part caused the collapse of a building, to “Seven Floors,” which imagines a sanatorium where patients are housed on each floor according to the gravity of their illness and brilliantly highlights the ominous machinations of bureaucracy, Buzzatis surreal, unsettling tales reckon with the struggle that lies beneath everyday interactions, the sometimes perverse workings of human emotions and desires, and, with wit and pathos, describe the small steps we take as individuals and as a society in our march toward catastrophe.
With hints of Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe, Catastrophe, published for the first time in the United States, feels as timely today as ever.
An interesting sense of tension, especially in the earlier stories in the collection, Buzzati is good at producing an atmosphere of dread and growing cognitive dissonance, The protagonist senses that something sweeping and terrible is going on, which is all the more scary for not knowing what it is,
But is there much to Buzzati beyond that Publishers gotta stop comparing things to Kafka on their jacket copy, This is nowhere near as uncanny or as deep, it has none of the personal moral urgency of Kafka, In fact after reading a few of the stories in a row they start to seem a bit formulaic or gimmicky, I've noticed this among stories produced for magazines of this era: they feel a bit like Twilight Zone episodes, with some everyman in the protagonist seat,
I will certainly revisit some of my faves, 'The Collapse of the Baliverna,' 'Catastrophe,' and 'The Landslide,' are examples of Buzzati doing what he does well, 'The Scala Scare' had some beautiful writing, especially towards the end, 'The Alarming Revenge of a Domestic Pet' was kind of an odd duck in the collection but probably my favorite, It was so astonishingly strange compared to the rest of the stories, it must've been taken directly from a dream, A great collection of short stories with just a few clunkers, I can't imagine how Buzzatti is not more well known today, At times to me his writings evoke Edgar Allen Poe as well as The Twilight Zone, Most of the stories have a sinister and menacing quality to them, No blood and guts, no special effects, . but like the stories from The Twilight Zone, the magic is in the writing, Suspenseful, usually with an enderlying sense of dread and doom, Often the stories feature happless characterssuch as you or I who suddenly find themselves in hopeless situations due to the smallest of decisions that they have little to no control over.
And the author Never lets up, No hand of God rescues in these stories, I enjoyed his collection Restless Nights a little more than this one, but this is still an awesome read, Dino Buzzatis stories fit into the bleak European country of the subconscious that occupied the writing of Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, and Stefan Grabinski, He summons up a strange feeling of distress and anxiety that lingers over his tales, with characters often trapped on their way towards the end, Seemingly hidden branches of bureaucracy govern strange places, and the world is inhabited by queer, half fabled creatures, But the lingering weirdness and dread that his stories hint at come into full bloom when he writes the human characters in these tales, A morbid attention to details of the worst part of human nature lies over many of the characters, jealousy, selfdoubt, suspicion, and narcissism fuel their desires and motivation, and really showcase humanity at its very worst.
Some of my favorite tales in the collection deal heavily with these themes,
“The Scala Scare” pits the attendees of an opera event against each other under a looming terrorist attack, The story makes for deeply uncomfortable reading, and I cant help thinking that this story must be even more relevant in todays society than when it was written.
“Seven Floors” the renowned sanatorium has seven floors according to the severity of their patients, At the top, the healthiest ones reside, and at the bottom, the heavy blinds remain shut most of the time, We follow Giovanni Corte at his downwards spiral as his condition gradually worsens, A dark, Kafkaesque tale of hidden bureaucracy, selfdoubt, and an everpresent fear of death,
“An Alarming Revenge of a Domestic Pet” veers into the realm of Poe and has an eerie, dreamlike quality over it, The pet in question is only vaguely described, making the situation surreal, creepy and never fully explained,
“The Slaying of the Dragon” revolves around a mountainous village in Italy who deliver offerings to a fabled dragon and the man who sets out to destroy the monster.
Strange and heartbreaking, again mankinds actions towards itself and nature comes with grave consequences sometimes,
Buzzati reaches out and pulls you into the “Catastrophe” not only the story but the concept throughout the collection, as hes exposing the characters and the reader to the imminent end, you dont know whats going to happen, but you can feel it deep within your stomach that its going to be something dreadful.
The comparison to Kafka is inevitable, as Buzzati clearly is inspired by him, but there is so much more here, There is something singularly wonderful at the banality of some of these tales, how something so deceptively simple can be so effective in the hands of a masterful author like Buzzati.
Catastrophe amp Other Stories
This short story collection is from one of the most inventive minds of Italy writer and poet Dino Buzzati, I liked this collection more than the one I read last year Buzzatis The Siren: A Selection of Short Stories, In Catastrophe amp Other Stories, there are twenty stories overall, but I am reviewing only five below, Though this collection is a bit of a mixed bag, it is definitely worth a read, especially for those into absurdist, existentialist or Kafkaesque fiction,
I. Seven Floors
This is the best story in the collection, in my opinion, In it, one Giuseppe Corte enters one unusual sanatorium and desperately wants to remain on its top floor the seventh, but circumstances are not in his favour.
Why such a desire It so happens that this medical establishment is designed in such a way that its top floors are reserved for mild cases, and the further down you go, the more serious cases you encounter until eventually you hit floor one where the hopeless dying “convalesce”.
One hero is soon torn by a dilemma: he does not want to be a serious medical case, but the lower floors also have better medical equipment and more knowledgeable doctors and nurses.
What does one do Seven Floors is a fine example of a purely Kafkaesque terror, and the story can also be viewed as a satire on illness, diagnosis, hypochondria, and medical establishment.
II. The Enchanted Coat/
“The more you have the more you want“, A man notices a wellcut suit on another man and asks that man who is his tailor, Upon receiving the directions to this tailor, our protagonist finds himself outside an ordinary building, but what awaits him as he is fitted his new coat is anything but ordinary.
In the course of a day, the man discovers the fact that his new coat now “gives” him money, which means he finds rolls of banknotes in his new coat every time he puts his hand into his pocket.
The man does not dwell on this mystery too long before he starts spending his new capital, Buzzatis story explores the guilt of a man who has to live with the fact that he now enjoys the riches and luxury without ever having had to work for them.
III. Something Beginning with “L”/
Cristoforo Schroder, a timber merchant, comes to one village and is visited by his doctor and another gentleman, While he is doing his morning toilette, the doctor suggest to him that, although he is feeling better, it will be best if Schroder puts a number of leeches on himself for a little therapeutic bleeding while they are waiting in his room.
Little Schroder suspects that what awaits in a few minutes time is something completely unimaginable, In this story, I particularly appreciated the dramatic contrast between the calm, unassuming beginning of the story and the horrifying, worldasweknowithasended finale,
IV. The Epidemic/
In this fantastical story, a rumour gets to Colonel Ennio Molinas, a civil servant working in one Ministry, that that the current influenza epidemic only affects those people who oppose the present government.
Thus, all the people that get sick with this cold are deemed traitors and enemies, The only issue, though, is that soon the Colonel starts feeling unwell himself, Buzzati certainly knows how to maintain his readers complete attention phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, but the ending is a little bit of an anticlimax, too.
V. Catastrophe/
This story reminded me of Dürrenmatts The Tunnel, which I read last year, Here, a man finds himself on a train that moves rather fast through an Italian countryside when he notices that all the people found outside the train, that is on the fields and alleys, behave rather oddly they are running and shouting.
Our protagonist starts to wonder whether the train he is on, as well as this trains destination, have something to do with the unbelievable panic he sees in these people when he looks out of a train window.
This is one suspenseful story, but I found the ending too uncertain for this mystery, .