If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

The thing I enjoyed the most about this book was when it finally came to an end. Although the premise of this book was interesting enough, even clever, Calvino really didn't pull it off (at least for me personally).

I have never wanted to put a book down as much as this one. None of the beginnings of the various stories in this book were interesting, at least to me, and I didn't warm to Calvino's writing style at any point. I found it far too wordy and laborious, and found my mind wandering off more often than not while reading. At the points where it was a second-person narrative, the plot became increasingly silly and confusing and at the end of the day I just did not care.

This wasn't for me. It seems postmodernism isn't my thing, and instead of inspired I found this to be almost lazy storytelling. It was as though Calvino had struggled to follow any of his novel ideas to fruition, so decided to bung them all together with a faint, almost non-existant overarching plot and call it a technique. Maybe it will be for you but I doubt I will ever read another Calvino book again. Now let's get back to the good stuff.

Calvino called it a hyper-fiction: a book within a book. If on a... is a clever amalgamation of a story within a story within a story; a reader of a book with a reader of a book and other readers. The alchemy of contusions that blurs the physical existence of the reader so he fuses with the reader in print. For who has read a book and then seen the world with stale sight? For to inhale the spirit of the book and to read it afresh is to intake it with renewed senses.

If on a... is a pleasant read for it is a book for readers who in reading romance with life, for as characters may come and go and one paperback may replace another in your nightstand, but Calvino wrote this a book where the character of the reader reigns supreme.

But then, like the devilish fiend that he is, he shells out stories with just the right atmosphere to ensnare the imagination of the reader, and just when the case has arrived at the tipping point, he leaves us hanging! Just like the fictional characters are at the mercy of their creator, so the reader finds himself a puppet who is being carefully rowed to within sight of the shore but never actually landing.

It is interesting to note that while in fiction it is norm to not address the readers directly, because reading being an exercise in abandonment in a created world, so the reader doesn’t want to be reminded of the fact that it is make-belief after all. But Calvino not only shatters that by speaking directly to the reader, but also by advising the reader on the art and exercise of reading. And while schooling and such interjected commentary draws the reader into the book and the lines between the reader in the book and the reader you begin to blur. In this exercise, the character of the reader in the book is kept sufficiently incomplete so the reader you, irrespective of your intentions find common ground and ultimately sink into the identity that is confined by Calvino’s created world.

It is a clever book on many counts. The interrupted endings a reflection of reality that is in continuous flux for regression to the mean, and so rarely comes neatly tied up in a bow. The frustrations in the real world find a parallel context within the plot.

In short, this is a book written for readers, about readers, about reading, and about writing.

On that note, does anyone actually open drawers to prop their feet while reading?! (My experiments with the same left a very red mark above my ankle with the pain to accompany it.)

Putting into exact words all the feelings this book evokes in the reader, is a task not just tremendously challenging but virtually impossible to execute.
After getting through the first few pages, I felt like Naomi Watts in The Ring, being pulled against her will into the world of the creepy video by Samara.
I know that's a rather cheap analogy. Comparing a creation of one of the most accomplished post-modernist writers to have emerged from Europe to a Hollywood version of a Japanese film, is pretty close to blaspheming.
But then nothing more apt comes to mind at the moment.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is Calvino's tribute to the spirit of reading, writing and the utterly unique but beautiful relationship between a writer and a reader.
In an inimitable style and with trenchant wit he has dissected the art of writing, numerous aspects of the world of publishing and the melange of emotions any writer is bound to go through while working on his/her newest masterpiece, irrespective of whether it is aimed at garnering record sales or becoming a piece of critically acclaimed literature. He has also reached out from within the pages of the book, grabbed hold of the reader, sucked him/her right into the heart of the narrative (if you call it that) and taken him/her on a delightfully unpredictable journey where he/she is simultaneously the reader, the writer and a character at the mercy of a writer's whims.

In a nutshell, this is Italo Calvino serenading the reader and the spirit of this wonderful but singular form of communication that exists between two individuals who may never know each other in person but for a few blissful hours/days of their lives, feel bonded to each other on an alternate level in ways, unimaginable by a third party.
Because just as the reader tries to form an image of the story-teller in his/her mind, the writer too keeps his/her prospective reader in mind while penning down his/her thoughts.

A pure work of genius that is bound to enthrall readers for generations to come and perhaps it won't be an exaggeration to state that many aspiring writers may want to adopt this book as their Bible.

P.S.:- Not recommended for readers looking for a great story to read. Since this is Calvino manipulating, baffling, exasperating and dazzling the reader in equal measure and in quick succession, by writing the exact opposite (for lack of a better term) of a conventional novel.

P.P.S.:- Such a shame this man never won the Nobel Prize.

This exhilarating interactive novel- in which the reader, lured into the text by the enticements of Italo Calvino's splendid intelligence, turns into the book's central character--was its author's triumphant response to the question of whether the art of fiction could survive the vast changes taking place in the communications technology of our world.

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Amazing! Brilliant! Very few books have made such a deep impression on me as this one. Thank you Mister Calvino.

I don't want to spoil the future reader's pleasure by revealing too much about it, but this is a novel in which the reader is the main focus of attention. It deals with different "categories" of novels, especially those you would like to read, those you haven't been able to finish or those that haven't been written (yet). Calvino manages to create such an intimacy with the reader in playing with his/her expectations, surprising him/her on every page with humour and brilliance.

We booklovers always expect something from each book, and this one contains so many that my pleasure has been multiplied tenfold. So turn off your television, make yourself comfortable and make sure no one is going to interrupt when you open the first page of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

If on a sick bed, a reader picks up If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino, he or she is almost certain to become more ill. Why, oh why, of all the times I could have read this, I picked it up when I was physically unfit to read it? At first I was just mildly under the weather, and I was comforted by the opening pages which extended an enticing invitation to put up one’s legs and settle down for a good read. How lovely, I thought. The atmospheric first chapter opens in a provincial train station with attention drawn to a cloud of smoke on a damp evening. Nice lulling effect or was it the cough mixture I had taken?

Then the narrator addresses the reader, “For a couple of pages now you have been reading on, and this would be the time to tell you clearly whether this station where I have got off is a station of the past or a station of today: instead the sentences continue to move in vagueness, grayness, in a kind of no man’s land of experience reduced to the lowest denominator. Watch out: it is surely a method of involving you gradually, capturing you in the story before you realize it - a trap.” In the gathering fog of my reading, I knew that this travel on a winter’s night is not going to be an easy journey. True enough, the journey became curiouser and curiouser. Two days later, my head was literally splitting, and I had to go see my favorite GP to tame an evil flu bug.

If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler is a clever writing experiment in which ten stories are each broken off midway and each becomes a different story. In essence, it is a post-modern novel with a meta-fictional structure. There is the Reader (which is also the narrator) and the Other Reader (Ludmilla) to whom the Reader is romantically linked. There is Ermes Marana, a trickster translator, who fouls up the translation of these stories with diabolical intent, and who is responsible for the rude truncation of all the stories. Marana has founded a group called the Organization of Apocryphal Power that produces counterfeit books all over the world. Calvino must be prescient. Before fake news, there are already fake books! There is Irnerio who has stopped recognizing groups of letters as words, but subverts reading by turning books into artwork. There is Lotaria versus Ludmilla, two sisters who read in totally different ways. Lotario technically does not read. She reads quickly via a computer software that churns out lists of words in a book in order of frequencies and from there derive thematic recurrences to confirm her preformed convictions. Ludmilla is the true reader who spends hours immersed in a book and welcomes the open spaces in which to give it meaning.

The ten stories are located in diverse and exotic settings that are matched by strange-sounding character names. Not all are easy to read and follow, and demands close attention if one is not to get befuddled. At several points, I had wanted to give up reading.

But I soldiered on. Calvino does tell good stories, a few of which I wished to read more just when they ended abruptly. These stories have an interesting cast of characters: two boys trading places to pick up new skills and having to leave their sweethearts behind (‘Outside the town of Malbork’), a female artist wanting to help her lover break out of prison (‘Leaning from the steep slope’), a murderer trying to stuff a corpse into too small a bag (‘Looks down in the gathering shadow’), a visiting professor obsessed with the ringing of telephones (‘In a network of lines that enlace’), a prolific writer who can no longer write and is afraid to now that he is made to believe that aliens can infiltrate his mind (‘In a network of lines that intersect’), a research assistant seducing his professor’s wife as well as daughter (‘On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon’), an adolescent boy returning to an Indian village to be reunited with his biological mother after his white father dies (‘Around an empty grave’), and a few other tales I did not track as well (in my medicated stupor). The writing in some of these is beautiful - lyrical and sensuous.

Fundamentally, If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler is a book about reading and the author’s job of writing. Calvino has, in fact, brilliantly provided a narrative structure that allows the reader to take a step back and de-construct the reading experience. There are rich thoughts on the sanctity of reading, the pain of literary composition, the productive writer versus the tormented writer, and what gives writing its substance. Calvino also offers an insider perspective of what literary composition demands of the writer and the toll it can take on him or her. Below are quotations that I believe many readers and writers can relate to:

When do words assume meaning?
“If we assume that writing manages to go beyond the limitations of the author, it will continue to have meaning only when it is read by a single person and passes through his mental circuits. Only the ability to be read by a given individual proves that what is written shares in the power of writing, a power based on something that goes beyond the individual. The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say, 'I read, therefore it writes.’"

Until a thought or idea is penned, it has no communicative value.
‘It is on the page, not before, that the word even that of the prophetic raptus, becomes definitive, that is to say, becomes writing. It is through the confining act of writing that the immensity of the nonwrtten becomes legible, that is, through the uncertainties of spelling, the occasional lapses, oversights, unchecked leaps of the word and the pen. Otherwise, what is outside of us should not insist on communicating through the word, spoken or written: let it send its messages by other paths.’

A risk writers take
“Since I have become a slave labourer of writing, the pleasure of reading has finished for me.”

Writer’s Burnout
‘For some time now, every novel I begin writing is exhausted shortly after the beginning, as if I had already said everything I have to say.’

Re-reading
‘...but at every re-reading, I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern?’

We read only one book.
‘Every new book I read comes to be a part of the overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings. This does not come about without some effort: to compose that general book, each individual book must be transformed, enter into a relationship with the books I have read previously, become their corollary or development or confirmation or gloss or reference text. For years I have been coming to this library, and I explore It volume by volume, shelf by shelf, but I could demonstrate to you that I have done nothing but continue the reading of a single book.’

To me, this last quotation nicely sums up what this brilliant book is all about. I have to admit that I am glad to have read If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler. I am also equally glad to have completed the journey.

This was one of my favourite books. Comfort reading. Fairly sure that I bought this in the early to mid 1990s in Webberleys bookshop in Stoke-on-Trent. It was an old fashioned shop with dark wooden bookshelves that where too close together, so that it was difficult to get round, you had to pick your way and wind about to get to the books you wanted to look at. Great place.

So I went there and picked up the book, carried it home on the long bus ride which seemed to go round most of the five towns and read the first chapter which was about someone who'd been waiting for the latest Calvino book to come out, had bought it from the bookshop, gone home, settled down and read the first chapter.

Then the second chapter was completely different. It was a noirish thriller in a train station, maybe about spies wanting to make contact and exchange briefcases. But the next chapter is the same - the book has been misprinted and only contains the same chapter repeatedly. And The Reader goes back to the shop to swap the copy for a 'correct' one.

The novel then alternates between chapters about The Reader searching for the novel and the chapters of the books that he finds on the way.

The books that The Reader finds increasingly have reference to themes based round deception and uncertainty.

It does all come to a conclusion though.

Fun. Recommended.

La historia comienza con "tú" lector, yendo a comprar el nuevo libro de Italo Calvino titulado "Si una noche de invierno un viajero". "Tú, lector" comienzas a leerlo para descubrir que está mal encuadernado. Al ir a devolverlo a la librería, descubres que el libro no es el de Calvino y que estás leyendo otro, con el que decides continuar. Pero no será tan fácil...
Una narración enmarcada, una obra indefinible, un reto literario, historias que se abren sin cesar y no tienen un cierre, el placer de la lectura por la lectura misma. Un experimento hermoso en el que no falta erotismo, egocentrismo e ironía.
Si te gustan los juegos literarios, tú lector, puedes divertirte bastante. Si para provocativo, confuso o caótico ya tienes suficiente con la realidad, puedes pasar de largo...

"¿Hasta cuándo seguirás dejándote arrastrar pasivamente por la peripecia? Te habías lanzado a la acción lleno de impulso aventurero: ¿y después? Tu función se ha reducido pronto a la de quien registra situaciones decididas por otros, sufre arbitrariedades, se encuentra complicado en acontecimientos que escapan a su control. Entonces, ¿de qué te sirve tu papel de protagonista?"