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A review by millennial_dandy
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
4.0
4.5 rounded down to 4
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is such a tricky book to comment on because not only is it genre-bending in the sense that there's this pervasive magical-realism to it, but also in the sense that it's one part novel, one part treatise on the reader-author relationship. Like a dialogue a la Plato, 'If on a Winter's Night' employs fiction as a vehicle for its own philosophical musings.
And those musings are incredibly interesting. Is death of the author possible? In what ways is the reading experience a collaboration between reader and author? In arguably the wackiest in a series of wacky chapters, he explores the needle-threading fascist regimes need to do when it comes to censorship so that they have something to unite the citizenry in despising.
Much of the first chapter is comprised of a list of the different types of books we buy at bookshops.
These sections are Calvino at his best, I'd argue.
As is often the case in framed narratives, the framing device is the least interesting and least developed, and this did get a tad tedious in the moments that Calvino slowed it down instead of just allowing the framing device to exist as the mechanism by which to develop the clever idea that holds the novel together: 'what if you start a book, it cuts off just as it's getting interesting, you think you find the complete thing only to discover it's not the same book, but another, equally interesting novel that also cuts off just as it's getting interesting. Rinse, repeat ten times.
This is an interesting idea on paper, but has to be pulled off by a writer with chops. Luckily, Calvino does indeed have the chops to pull it off and every story fragment is as engrossing as the last. And the twist (of sorts) at the end that reveals how they're all connected is earned and very clever. One of those things that a truly astute reader could pick up on, and the average reader could have wash over them, though both would walk away satisfied.
There are so many threads to this book for it being so relatively short, and if you pull on one it invariably pulls on another because Calvino is just so darned good at knitting that even criticizing the framing device feels hollow when it's clear what greater purpose it serves.
It's one of those books that, having read it, makes me more understanding of those people who obsess over trying to interpret books like 'Ulysses' or 'Gravity's Rainbow.' I can't speak to the specifics of those books, but I imagine that their authors were also pretty big lovers of reading and language -- as Calvino must also have been, given how much fun he obviously had putting this book together.
If you're a writer, this is a book for you to read and feel seen, and learn about the craft. If you're a reader, this is a book for you to read and feel seen, and dig into for all the little easter eggs.
This book made me want to write and it made me want to read, so thank you, Mr. Calvino: mission accomplished.
But, in the spirit of 'Reading Rainbow', you don't have to take my word for it.
I leave you with a few quotes. If any of them resonate with you, then 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' is your book:
"How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition that is my person." (p.171)
"Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do [...] Every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a state of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain that equilibrium." (p.235-236)
"If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought [...] that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it." (p.256)
"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings." (p.256)
"My gaze digs between the words to try to discern what is outlined in the distance, in the spaces that extend beyond the words 'the end.'" (p.256)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is such a tricky book to comment on because not only is it genre-bending in the sense that there's this pervasive magical-realism to it, but also in the sense that it's one part novel, one part treatise on the reader-author relationship. Like a dialogue a la Plato, 'If on a Winter's Night' employs fiction as a vehicle for its own philosophical musings.
And those musings are incredibly interesting. Is death of the author possible? In what ways is the reading experience a collaboration between reader and author? In arguably the wackiest in a series of wacky chapters, he explores the needle-threading fascist regimes need to do when it comes to censorship so that they have something to unite the citizenry in despising.
Much of the first chapter is comprised of a list of the different types of books we buy at bookshops.
These sections are Calvino at his best, I'd argue.
As is often the case in framed narratives, the framing device is the least interesting and least developed, and this did get a tad tedious in the moments that Calvino slowed it down instead of just allowing the framing device to exist as the mechanism by which to develop the clever idea that holds the novel together: 'what if you start a book, it cuts off just as it's getting interesting, you think you find the complete thing only to discover it's not the same book, but another, equally interesting novel that also cuts off just as it's getting interesting. Rinse, repeat ten times.
This is an interesting idea on paper, but has to be pulled off by a writer with chops. Luckily, Calvino does indeed have the chops to pull it off and every story fragment is as engrossing as the last. And the twist (of sorts) at the end that reveals how they're all connected is earned and very clever. One of those things that a truly astute reader could pick up on, and the average reader could have wash over them, though both would walk away satisfied.
There are so many threads to this book for it being so relatively short, and if you pull on one it invariably pulls on another because Calvino is just so darned good at knitting that even criticizing the framing device feels hollow when it's clear what greater purpose it serves.
It's one of those books that, having read it, makes me more understanding of those people who obsess over trying to interpret books like 'Ulysses' or 'Gravity's Rainbow.' I can't speak to the specifics of those books, but I imagine that their authors were also pretty big lovers of reading and language -- as Calvino must also have been, given how much fun he obviously had putting this book together.
If you're a writer, this is a book for you to read and feel seen, and learn about the craft. If you're a reader, this is a book for you to read and feel seen, and dig into for all the little easter eggs.
This book made me want to write and it made me want to read, so thank you, Mr. Calvino: mission accomplished.
But, in the spirit of 'Reading Rainbow', you don't have to take my word for it.
I leave you with a few quotes. If any of them resonate with you, then 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' is your book:
"How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition that is my person." (p.171)
"Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do [...] Every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a state of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain that equilibrium." (p.235-236)
"If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought [...] that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it." (p.256)
"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings." (p.256)
"My gaze digs between the words to try to discern what is outlined in the distance, in the spaces that extend beyond the words 'the end.'" (p.256)