Tag Archives: if on a winter’s night a traveler

This novel by Italo Calvino is easily placed among my favorite books, and I’d likely put it up there in the top ten maybe. It is a writer’s book, a book for writers.  It is a book about readers and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I may have been right in my belief that the last couple of chapters were aimed more directly at the reader, as in this last chapter, Chapter 11, we get the narrator’s decision to look up all the books that … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This is an interesting section and again, I am not all that sure I’ve caught the drift of it.  What story down there awaits its end? is first person, the narrator walking down a street of a large, crowded city, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I am getting the feeling that I have lost the sense of enjoyment of this novel; the immersion of myself within its meaning.  Chapter 10 gives up information that indeed ties the story into some semblance of plot, the Reader … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Up to this point, throughout the book I have read as a writer, seeking out the meaning in Calvino’s words as if directly spoken to the author in the reader.  Metaphor’s abound, and in this vein, I have taken the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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. Love it! You had … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Oh how I wish I had formed a reading group just for this one book alone! It struck me–maybe unreasonably, maybe just very late–that there is another underlying theme to the whole of this book.  Chapter 9, and we’re back … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I laughed aloud at this one, where I feel Calvino has surely stuck this particular reader into his book as well: At all these reflections of mine, Mr. Okeda remained silent, as he does always when I happen to talk … Continue reading → Continue reading →

A nice analogy to hypertext: I said I would like to distinguish the sensation of each single ginkgo leaf from the sensation of all the others, but I was wondering if it would be possible. (…) If from the ginkgo … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This chapter has been absolutely delightful in its revelations.  Having broken the pattern of second person (Reader) as narrator pov, it has switched to first person and that in the character of Silas Flannery, author of portions (perhaps) of this … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Evidently Lotaria has a very different view towards reading for context: She explained to me that a suitably programmed computer can read a novel in a few minutes and record the list of all the words contained in the text, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Coincidence seems to happen more often as you get older, or maybe you are just more aware.  One of yesterday’s posts in Hypercompendia notes the change in writing style an author may undergo that makes ‘old’ writing nearly unrecognizable as … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Readerly/Writerly, Shmeaderly/Shmiterly.  Had Barthes proposed his theories in Calvino-speak, I would have embraced them more readily. My resistance was not completely due to my stubborn streak but as much, I would think, to his manner of presenting them. Here’s Calvino: … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In Chapter 8 we get a closer look at the supposed author of the book(s) that our Readers seek, and that is Silas Flannery. He is a mysterious figure, and one of the most intriguing as Calvino uses him to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →