The Night Driver - Italo Calvino

Oh, but this short story is lovely. I've been struggling through Calvino's collection, The Complete Cosmicomics, but this one somehow just clicked. Each of the stories in the collection is an arduous mental mountain to climb, primarily due to the endless, multi-page-spanning sentences. Once you get into the habit of treating commas and conjuctions as pauses to breathe, the stories do settle into a more palatable rhythm. Each is built around a (typically convoluted) thesis, which the author explores in excruciating detail via the narrator's actions and thoughts. It really is a workout for the mind.

But, "The Night Driver" is perhaps easier to read than the others in the collection - indeed, I found it sublimely enjoyable. It is, at its core, a joke about game theory. Most of the Cosmicomics deal with convoluted, jealous, yet existentially-aware love. In this one, such love leads to a schmear of Zen cream cheese on a burnt Nash equilibrium bagel. Please do read it.