If you expect a novel to follow a form like most novels
you’ve read, and you’d be disappointed otherwise,
you’d better not pick up If
on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Italo
Calvino’s book is what’s called postmodern (it
plays with form and convention) and metafiction (it forces readers to
pay attention to the fact that they’re reading). It is
ultimately more about ideas than plot and characters.
It is also awfully ingenious. Calvino demonstrates great virtuosity in
weaving his main narrative in between 10 opening chapters of different
novels of widely varied genres. The Reader, whom Calvino addresses in
the second person (i.e., you), starts out trying to read Italo
Calvino’s If
on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and
finds that his book has only the first chapter. When he returns to the
bookstore for a complete book, he is given yet another book —
a different book — with only a first chapter. He meets the
Other Reader, who is there for the same reason. And so it goes for the
Reader and the Other Reader as they are left hanging by nine more
opening chapters. In the intervening chapters, the search for an
explanation takes the Reader on an increasingly bizarre global quest
involving a collapsing publishing company, a fraudulent translator,
aliens, revolutionaries, and repressive authorities.
Ultimately it seems that If
on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is about reading:
You, the Reader, are induced to think about what you might have taken
for granted. Why do you like to read? What do you read? How do you
read? Whether you ultimately are wowed or frustrated by it,
Calvino’s clever concoction could be worth reading just to
get you thinking about such questions.
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