Bad Glacier

Book 15: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino

Written in the second-person, this book follows the path of the Reader as he attempts to read If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, the new novel by Italo Calvino. Unfortunately, there has been a problem during the book’s printing; the first chapter repeats over and over, so the Reader returns to the store to find an intact copy. This leads him to another book which is similarly interrupted, and off we go on a search for these novels that doubles as an extended meditation on the writing, publishing, and reading of books.

In other words, postmodern like crazy.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler explores, among (many) other things, the reasons people read, the expectations they have when doing so, the meanings readers extract from a book compared to a meaning the author may have intended, and the “reality” of a work of fiction. This may sound tedious, but really, it’s not. This is a fun book to read. Calvino is funny, the story line is entertaining, and, despite appearances, the plot is not terribly hard to follow. Some people might not be able to handle the lack of closure created by the ten openings that are never concluded, but for everyone else, I would definitely recommend it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 at 10:41 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.