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

In this portion of Chapter 7, Calvino turns to address the 2nd Person POV to both Readers at one time, since they have ‘become one’ in bed.  Even while he likens the sexual act to reading as in reading bodies, he teaches still.

Calvino on close reading:

And you, too, O Reader, are meanwhile an object of reading: the Other Reader now is reviewing your body as if skimming the index, and at some moments she consults it as if griped by sudden and specific curiosities, then she lingers, questioning it and waiting till a silent answer reaches her, as if every partial inspection interested her only in the light of a wider spatial reconnaissance. (p. 155)

This addresses for me the layers of literature, the meanings that can be found by the individual reader and not necessarily intended or at the least, the particular intent of the author.  Calvino goes nearer the heart of individual reading here:

Meanwhile, in the satisfaction you receive from her way of reading you, from the textual quotations of your physical objectivity, you begin to harbor a doubt: that she is not reading you, single and whole as you are, but using you, using fragments of you detached from the context to construct for herself a ghostly partner, known to her alone, in the penumbra of her semiconsciousness, and what she is deciphering is this apocryphal visitor, not you. (p. 156)

This touches upon Barthes’ death of the author.  What the reader does is pick and choose among the full display of phrases, ideas, prose that has been carefully chosen and toiled over by the author, to instead not only bring to it new meaning, but also take from the reading only those selections to inhabit a space that is separate from the piece of work, but a portion of a whole (or ghostly partner) created by the reader.

Too, while the concept of reading ‘someone’ (mind, body, etc.) is not by any means new, here we have the specific thought of portions, pieces, experience that are both put into and taken out of what we read.

Once again, wow.