March 25 - "Dauntless Little John"

A Week of Italo Calvino“Dauntless Little John”
by Italo Calvino
Italian Folktales (1980)

* (Eh) Folktale

Dauntless Little John takes the only available room in town, a room in which no one has ever survived the night.

I’ll be honest: the magic of this story was lost on me. I didn’t understand the story in the least. Part of the problem may be my unfamiliarity with the culture – I know nothing of Italian folklore; I know little of any folklore outside what I have read in comic books and seen in cartoons. I do like the idea of an unafraid boy, but the mysteriously assembled giant and surprise ending made little sense. All the fancy sentences and styling can’t save a story you do not understand. In a collection of 200 folktales, I simply hope to find more I enjoy than not.