If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979)

I think I may need to re-read this one, or maybe just concede that I'm not smart enough to "get it." I pretty much felt like it was pretentious nonsense.

A crazy ride of a story, in which the Reader is the main character who is simply trying to read a book, but who gets frustrated at every turn and by more and more outlandish disruptions. Each new manuscript promises to be the completion of the previous, but only introduces yet another new book, which, in turn, is cut short and unfinished. Chapters of this main plot (which also contains an Other Reader, with whom the Reader carries out a love story of sorts, and a romp of a detective story as well) alternate with the actual first chapters of the unfinished manuscripts, which themselves leave the (R/r)eader genuinely frustrated and wanting more.
In short, it's a hoot, although it does get a bit bogged down in its own absurdities toward the end, I feel. Think Inspector Clouseau meets Arabian Nights meets a Choose Your Own Adventure book in which all the choices are just tantalizingly out of your reach, and then throw in a healthy pinch of musings on the nature of readers, authors, books, and the act of reading itself. ( )

This would have to be one of the most unusually good books I have read. It is not quite a novel and not quite a collection of short stories, organised in an unusual way. It is partly written in the second person (Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City was my first second-person novel) and on several occasions, the author speaks directly to the reader (a literary technique known as "authorial intrusion"). The main story is structured using numbered chapters, interspersed with the beginnings of several books (with the relevant book names as chapter headings) that relate directly to the main story. It is rather complex in terms of its structure and I couldn't help thinking it is very much a "post-modern" novel. But it works. I am often surprised by the number of books that are about books and authors, a bit like 42nd Street - a musical within a musical. But this book is very clever. While at times I couldn't help thinking that Calvino had turned a number of "false starts" into a publication, it is too good to have been written so perfunctorily. Two stand-out parts work for me. First, Calvino addresses two types of writers (pp. 173-4):One of the two is a productive writer, the other a tormented writer. The tormented writer watches the productive writer filling pages with uniform lines, the manuscript growing in a pile of neat pages. In a little while the book will be finished: certainly a best seller - the tormented writer thinks with a certain contempt but also with envy. He considers the productive writer no more than a clever craftsman, capable of turning out machine-made novels catering to the taste of the public; but he cannot repress a strong feeling of envy for that man who expresses himself with such methodological confidence... [The productive writer] feels [the tormented writer] is struggling with something obscure, a tangle, a road to be dug leading no one knows where... and he is overcome with admiration. Not only admiration, but also envy; because he feels how limited his work is, how superficial compared with what the tormented writer is seeking.I certainly feel like each of these authors depending on the type of writing I am engaged in. That self-consciousness is part of the process is something that Calvino weaves into the plot perfectly. Second, Calvino picks up on how I read (p. 254):Reading is a discontinuous and fragmentary operation.What I find most interesting about this reflection is that Calvino's work, or at least the several of his works I have read so far, all seem to play to the discontinuous and fragmentary reader. The structure of this work, much like Invisible Cities and Mr Palomar, suits a style of reader who is unable to read in large chunks of time. While not being able to read long and uninterrupted is far from ideal, Calvino's work is presented in convenient and memorable chunks that suit the fragmentary and disrupted peace of the post-modern worker. There is still a little more of Calvino's work for me to read, but I have now covered his most famous works. And I am delighted to have "discovered" Marcovaldo in a Shanghai bookstore which introduced me to one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century only a few years ago. ( )

What an experience this book was! It took me two tries to finish it, but I sailed through on my second try. I would warn anyone who wants to read this postmodern novel, to allot enough time to it as it is not an easy read. Within this novel itself are ten unfinished and unrelated novels. If that doesn't scare you away, prepare yourself for some intriguing reading. Know that this novel is about books and reading. The plot weaves around the inserted novels which are incorporated for a reason you, the Reader, will only find out at the end. I was totally absorbed in this book my second go round. The only thing I found disconcerting was that the writing was so good, I often wondered if some of what the author was trying to say was simply floating away over my head. It is too involved a novel for me to ever consider giving it a reread, but I would love to try another Calvino novel...after a short break to unwind! ( )

This was every bit as good as the last time that I read it.

For me, this is an 'event book', one of those novels that divides reading into a before and after. Wikipedia quotes David Mitchell as saying that the book has dated and is less impressive than it was. I suspect that I know which writer's work will still be read a hundred years from now (and Calvino's already been dead for three decades)... IOAWNAT is an education for any novelist wishing to experiment with the form. And at the same time, it really is laugh-out-loud funny for much of the time. Echoes of Borges' 'Fictions' reverberate around this novel and it's none the worse for that. It has to be read for Chapter 9 alone, the Ataguitania sequence, one of the smartest, funniest passages of writing in modern fiction.

In case you don't know this book, I'm not going to give away anything about the story. Suffice to say, I loved it but for those looking for a 'safe' read, this isn't it. ( )