In this, Chapter 9, we are back to the concept of computerized novels, though it is for you, dear Reader, that they are printing out that which you seek. Unfortunately, it gets screwed up and deleted.
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You had already realized she’s having a slightly nervous day today, Gertrude-Alfonsina; at a certain point she must have pressed the wrong key. The order of the words in the text of Calixto Bandera, preserved in the electronic memory to be brought again to light at any moment, has been erased in an instant demagnetization of the circuits. The multicolored wires now grind out the dust of dissolved words: the the the, of of of of, from from from, that that that that, in columns according to their respective frequency. The book has been crumbled, dissolved, can no longer be recomposed, like a sand dune blown away by the wind. (p. 220)
It is interesting that the concept of computerizing text includes the hope of survival over the relative instability of paper. Is Calvino poking fun at new age technology? Or is there more here; something can be said about the way he has presented the damage as columns of frequency of words that were mentioned earlier in the book as Lotaria’s time-saving method of reading. The words Calino chooses to exemplify this process are also those that would give us no real meaning of the novel’s plot, being an article, prepositions or the multifunctional that.
Neat too, the simile of ‘a sand dune blown away by the wind’ in that it is a natural phenomenon overtaking a technological one, or in effect, disintegrating as would…well, a book.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology