Category Archives: Calvino, Italo

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller: Read from May 10 to 18, 2013

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Reviews

To say I’ve never read a novel like this one before would be a silly thing to write since there isn’t another novel like it; it’s unique.

And I’m not going to review it either, at least not in the traditional sense because to do so would require flowcharts, venn diagrams, and a bunch of other things that have nothing to do with books and reading.

As the point of the novel was to describe, artistically, the process of reading as you are reading it about someone who is a reader Calvino succeeds brilliantly in thoroughly exploring this rabbit hole. And I can see why some people may think this novel was an exercise in writers block, but I don’t see it that way at all since everything does eventually all tie together and each story within a story relates, somehow, to the larger idea of reading.

Anyway, it’s probably best that I’m writing this late at night, immediately after having finished the book and still a little punch-drunk with what I just read. The book is to be experienced (read) and is so clever, so full of every whispered thought you’ve fuzzily been dimly aware of at times when reading other books that the best way to explain the book is to take a cue from the book itself and say “It is reading”.

Make of it what you will, but it’s genius.

80% done with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

So earlier in the novel we get the image of the hand stretching through the prison and now we understand the author wishes to only be a hand and cut off everything else between the author and the page.

And that hand has now pulled the Reader into the story so that he can get the Other Reader alone with him.

I think. And it doesn’t even matter because I’m just along for the ride and the ride is a lot of fun.

61% done with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Every so often you read a novel that makes you say to yourself, “I had no idea a writer was allowed to do that!”

Such is the case where the 2nd person perspective changes between characters: You the Reader also become You the Other Reader, Ludmilla.

Meanwhile the Other Reader is also a character in the books whom Marana (the falsifier of novels) is obsessed with.

That this all makes sense is amazing.

50% done with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Maybe at this point in the novel I’m trying a little too hard to make meaning of what is happening.

First we get a noir-thriller about a dame and a dead body (fun read, too) that ends in a true cliffhanger. Next we are back at the publisher reading the letters of a man who relationship to the story I’ve sort of lost the threat to, but it doesn’t matter really because the fall into this rabbit hole is still fun.

29% done with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

We all have a lot of books laying around we’ve never read. We all have books in mind we want to read but never get to.

With that in mind I think Calvino is having some fun with at our failings by saying with his incomplete stories, “if you’re not gonna read them, I’m not gonna write them.”

I do want to take note of the image of the writing hand contorting from the prison cell window. That really stays with me

9% done with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Calvino, Italo, If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

This has got to be one of the most original first chapters I’ve ever read.

I suppose what Calvino is doing here is trying to describe the process of reading, of immersing yourself in art, but he’s also interested in everything except the story. He describes all the books you pass in the bookstore to get to his book and his actual story, in the station, is told by showing all the people who ‘extras’.

Very fun!

t zero: Read from April 29 to May 09, 2013

Calvino, Italo, Reviews, t zero

I’ve never read Calvino, in fact I never even heard of him until Radiolab devoted a special episode to the reading of his short story ‘The Distance Of The Moon’ and I immediately fell in love.

What strikes me the most – overall about Calvino – is is blending of science and fantasy. He begins his stories with a basis in scientific fact but then explores the mysteriousness of these findings through purely magical musings. For me this mix of fact and fiction is at the heart of what makes life interesting and I love that the beauty of science and math can be described so fantastically without being dry, boring, or full of footnotes and caveats.

One of my all time favorite films is Kaufman’s ‘The Right Stuff’ based on Tom Wolfe’s novel (which I have not read). In the film when John Glen makes his famous orbit, two of his fellow Mercury astronauts travel down to Australia to communicate with him on one of that country’s satellite dishes. As Glen is overhead that night, outside the Australian station is an aborigine who chants and sends up the sparks from a great fire in the heaven. The sparks mix with the stars and form a perfect blend of the mystical and the factual – the human condition of attempting to explain and understand a universe he’s only dimly aware of. That scene always stuck with me and now discovering Calvino I feel like I’ve been given an opportunity to explore that relationship even more.

As for this book in particular, there is a common theme of being trapped I found interesting. He begins talking about a single cell that suddenly multiplies into the void the cell had only been vaguely aware of previously. Other stories deal with our lives as being packets of information and light that are obliged to follow certain rules. Finally we are prisoners in a universe sized Château d’If where every point leads to every other point but never beyond the confines of the walls.

I was also impressed by the writing itself, Calvino was not a postmodern hack – he was very deliberate in his wording (albeit translated) and he was even playful with his endings and wordplay. He really thought through what he was writing and never allowed himself to get off the rails no matter how strange the subject matter. That more than anything else really impressed me because my previous experience with postmodern strangeness usually results in my detesting the author’s inability to just tell a damn story.

Finally I loved that everything on the page made me think. I’m not sure if what I was thinking was what he intended, but I appreciated being able to explore those distant, fuzzy ideas that we’re sometimes aware of but can never really put into words or even coherent waking thoughts. I found that to be a lot of fun.

I’m absolutely going to read more Calvino.

99% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

The Count of Monte Cristo

What I imagined going on in this final story of the book was Calvino’s attempt to explain the universe itself.

We’re all trapped in the Château d’If and no matter how hard we try, no matter what knowledge Abbé Faria discovers or imparts on us, we’ll never leave an ever expanding universe – unless it contracts, time flows backwards and we all meet ourselves on the dock.

90% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

The Chase, The Night Driver

These two stories are about communication and information. Calvino could very well be describing how information moves around in a computer, but he’s also talking about modern life. The first story is information overload, the second is the mixed signals of life and the loneliness and confusion that arise from it.

The Night Driver is my next favorite story in this book.

73% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

t zero

The wordplay in this section is wonderful : petrified means not only frozen in time but also the fear of being eaten by a lion.

What’s more interesting is that Calvino isn’t just telling the story of what happens in one petrified moment in time, but he’s telling the story of an electron – of never inhabiting one place and time – and what that really means.

Great analogy.

59% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

Death

I love how repeated readings open up new interpretations; I wonder what I might think after a few more? These past three stories are about interconnections and harmony and how the small things manage the large. It’s a wonder to think about, and even in death the continuation of life is remarkable.

55% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

Mitosis & Meiosis

There was a moment I had when reading these two connected chapters when I suddenly became aware how amazing it is that all the different parts and mechanisms that make up an individual (the ‘I’) can work together well enough to keep the individual individual. How the whole thing doesn’t collapse under complexity or chemical argument is supremely incredible.

Calvino’s endings are the best too.

34% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

Blood, Sea

So far this is my favorite story in the book. Calvino imagines that the primordial sea we once swam in as primitive microbes is now the sea within us: our own blood.

What a beautiful idea of 4 characters in a VW bug, speeding dangerously along a coastal highway, the passengers lusting for each other, the blood hot and red and desirous and ancient and tragic.

25% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

Crystals

Qjwfq, the man, hoped that as the earth cooled after it formed from the swirling mass of gas orbiting the sun that it would become one, giant, uniform crystal. Vug, the girl, however, wanted variety and was okay with imperfections.

I enjoyed how the story flipped back between primordial earth and modern New Jersey even if the explanation between the sexes was a bit too nail on the head.

18% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

The Origin of the Birds

I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out some way to explain why I think Calvino chose to describe the actions in this story as if he were describing the panels in a comic strip. He’s too good of a writer to just arbitrarily use such a device, but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.

Maybe I just don’t ‘get’ the math but I like the merging of the known and the possible worlds.

8% done with t zero

Calvino, Italo, t zero

The Soft Moon

I never heard of Calvino until Radiolab’s recent reading of his story ‘The Distance of the Moon’; I immediately fell in love.

This is another story of the moon, only here it appears as sort of a gooey, rogue ‘planet’ that is captured by the earth’s gravity and begins to melt out of the sky and destroys an ancient, but more advanced civilization than our own.

Trippy, organic, weird & very cool.