I remember that when I initially made the blog posts for Part I about exactitude, I really struggled with understanding them. Sitting here, staring at my computer screen and wondering what part of my print literature would fit in well with this concept, it clicked very suddenly for me. I think that this is a revelation for how perfectly everything in this class ties together! Anyways, Calvino described Exactitude as lying somewhere in between the abstract behavior of fire and the organized behavior of a crystal. I remember the example Kublai Khan playing chess and getting lost in the intricacies of the wood on the chess board.
Thinking about exactitude, I was reminded of a quote in the book where Tina Fey is describing why her father had such a large impact on her life. The story is this: when Tina Fey was very young, her face was slashed with a knife by a stranger. She explains her father’s reaction:
When my face was slashed, my dad held me on his lab in the car to the hospital, applying direct pressure with the swift calm of a veteran and an ex-fireman. I looked up at him and asked him, “Am I going to die?” “Don’t speak,” he said. So yeah, he’s not the kind of guy who wants to watch people eat bugs on Survivor. It’s so clear to me how those two things are related.
When I read that segment, I knew exactly what Tina Fey meant by that. Her father seems to be Exact in his calm reaction to such a shocking event.