LITERATURE: If on a winter’s night… – Reader Input?

In this section, In a network of lines that intersect, I get the feeling that there is a hint of what a reader ‘writes’ into the story he is reading.  Since both readers have this particular book–going by the cover alone–the reader picks up this copy which is the Other Reader’s, and finds that the last word in the title is different from his copy: enlace versus intersect. Would that not possibly indicate that the two readers may read the same book differently?  Maybe not, but it’s a thought.

This story is different entirely (or, it’s the same!) and is about a man whose wealth and power has come from cunning and maneuvering.  He wishes therefore, to avoid the many enemies he has made and has devised a method of evading detection by multiplying the images of himself, his car, his mistress, his company sites; all but his wife. His ideal would be to use mirrors to reflect so many of his images–like a kaleidoscope.  Ultimately, this proves his undoing.

While there is an obvious metaphor in the refractions and intersections of lines and forms in the arrangement of mirrors, I can truly understand it only in its stated context of story, or else when relating to writing and literature, only to the hypertext value of it.

As in a kaleidoscope, the hypothesis I would like to record in these lines break up and diverge, just as before my eyes the map of the city became segmented when I dismantled it piece by piece to locate the crossroads where, according to my informers, the trap would be set for me, and to establish the point at which I would get ahead of my enemies so as to upset their plan in my own favor.  (p. 167)

Calvino may just be simulating narrative structure through plot points, but the simultaneity of the paths as described above would indicate a grid and design assembled atop it.  Roads; links.