#14 Travel Book: Hermit in Paris

Italo Calvino’s book gives the reader a vivid example of how the major events from his diverse life experiences occurred. In Hermit in Paris we see how an author, who was born in Cuba but soon taken to Italy by his parents, where he lived for more than twenty years, and whom also travelled from place to place, including France and the United States, narrates his life through the perspective he gets as a tourist/traveler from the cities he visits or those he lived in and the othering he partakes in during his travels, but also by the sense of home, the identity, and the external and internal journeys he overcomes throughout his younger years, since these are the years that shape the world of his imagination, even though he clearly states that New York, one of the many cities he visits, is his city.  Calvino also adds that even though he included some places he traveled to, like New York and Paris, in some of his writings, he is not inspired completely by neither the city nor the events that occurred while traveling, by being a tourist or from even living in these cities. The author not only portrays his perspective as a native of a country, but also shows his experiences as a tourist and a traveler during his two years in America, which gave him enough time to compare the two clashing cultures, the Italian and the American, from which he describes, through othering and stereotyping, his experiences and opinions upon traveling through the different cities in the United States. Calvino also portrays his experiences as a traveler in France and how, even though he spent many years in Paris, where he got married and even procreated, it never felt like it was his home.