Most of this story takes place in the impossibly tiny cramped point that is pre-Big Bang existence, then suddenly bursts the desire to make pasta for everyone; and so, everything else must follow: the physics for the act of making must come into being; the chemicals and atoms of pasta have to pop into existence; there must be sunlight to ripen the wheat, so stars duly explode; even the concept of everyone has to become comprehensible, so matter must rush outwards to fill time and space. This life-affirming world-shaping desire to host and cook and gather is more gendered than I would prefer nowadays (it could easily be “friends, let’s have pasta!” rather than “boys, I’ll make you some pasta!”) but the humane philosophy at the core of this mind-expanding story is wonderful anyway and to read it is to be made happy.
First published in Italian in 1965 in Le cosmicomiche and in English in 1968 in Cosmicomics; reprinted in The Complete Cosmicomics, Penguin 2009
A Personal Anthology 