Invisible Cities Assignment 3

Ethan Jones 1-8-07
Invisible Cities Assignment 3

The easiest theme to write for was the city without a theme, because there were no guidelines. Anything that came to mind could be incorporated into the city without worrying whether it would muddle the focus of the city or not. The descriptions without a theme were easier to write as well. Having strict guidelines to write by can actually hinder your creativity, so the city without a theme allowed me to express whatever came to mind in terms of description. The most difficult part of the assignment was writing cities that incorporated the themes used without repeating the city that Calvino wrote. I often found myself writing a very similar city to what Calvino wrote, and I had to go back and rewrite it. Calvino’s use of language was very appealing because he did such a good job with his own stories, however it was awkward incorporating the quotes into my own stories. I have different word choices then Calvino, and I feel it resulted in the quotes being quite obvious. I actually didn’t worry about writing in the same style of language as Calvino, because I felt that I could express my own ideas through my own word choice much better than using Calvino’s word choice. Rome in fact does seem like an invisible city to me, just because of how many things make such little sense to me. For instance, the driver’s are always in such a rush to get from point a to point b so that they can spend hours eating a meal or taking a nap. Rushing to relax… oh what irony! If I had to write about Rome I would most definitely choose contrast as my theme. Many of Rome’s peculiarities are in direct contrast with other Roman peculiarities.