The title story involves Amerigo, a rather naive young Communist who is employed as a "Watcher" at a hospital; he keeps an eye on the patients to make sure they are all aware enough to vote. Still, I must say the middle story, "Smog", about a determined nihilist being manipulated and also manipulating public opinion on smog in the big city is amazing. Bumped corners and the usual signs of circulation, adhesive and paper remnants to front pastedown and rear endpapers, stamps to title page, TOC and a few other pages with a couple blackouts.

Deliveries to destinations outside Australia are made by DHL courier, and cannot be made to post office boxes. The Watcher is the weakest of the three stories in my opinion, featuring a rambling and disjointed narrative that never gains any momentum. The Watcher” is deeply polarizing because, though it contains some of the best of Calvino’s wit, style, and constantly evolving philosophical turns, it also has some language and thinking about disability that comes off as fascistic and even eugenicist at times.As he watches during the voting time, the nuns bring by people who are mentally retarded, deformed, horribly ill, or all three. In "The Watcher, " a member of the Communist Party is assigned to a polling place in Turin's Hospital for Incurables, where he observes the rejects of humanity and a grotesque parody of the democratic process. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars.

Calvino regarded each of these causes as an enemy of humanity that limited the ability of people and society to remain healthy and whole.And while the descriptions of the sick, deformed and mentally retarded are disturbing, they're also quite sad -- Calvino never forgets that these are all people, who need love, and who were simply unluckier than most. The main character is assigned to a voting precinct in a giant Church-run urban institution that is a combination of convent, school, sanitarium and psychiatric asylum. The institution sprawled among poor, crowded neighborhoods, covering as much space as a whole quarter of the city, including a complex of asylums and hospitals and homes for the aged, schools, convents, virtually a city within the city, surrounded by walls and governed by different rules. Palomar are great, The Road to San Giovanni has a great essay on garbage, even the subpar collection Numbers in the Dark features a story I consider excellent ("Wind in a City"). With this caveat in mind, I think this would be a good introduction to Calvino’s general style and interests.