An experimental novel. The main character is a reader who can’t finish a book because the print copies are mixed up and he ends up re[Revised 12/4/22]
An experimental novel. The main character is a reader who can’t finish a book because the print copies are mixed up and he ends up reading first chapters of various novels over and over again. He meets up with a woman who has the same problem and he goes on a search to find the rest of the book for both of them.
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Actually there are two women, sisters, who have different ideas about books and what the purpose of reading is. They appear in different guises throughout the story. The narrative is labyrinth-like as if Borges had written it.
But it’s not fair to really focus on the “plot.” Like many of Calvino’s works, this is more a work of philosophy than a novel. And, like all of Calvino’s work, there’s a heavy dose of fantasy and absurdity. There’s a professor of “Cimmerian literature and Bothno-Ugaric languages” which sounded so realistic I looked them up to be sure they weren’t real!
The book is made up of ten stories; think of them as chapters. Recurring themes are messages that the main character sees around him and how we relate to books. “Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.” There is discussion of “someone who has learned not to read.”
The author touches on issues with translated books. There’s a chapter on ways of reading a book. While reading, “something must always remain that eludes us,” which has often been said of poetry. Well, there are quite a few things that will elude the reader a bit in this book!
I enjoyed his digs at deconstruction and the French scholars, such as this passage referring to a conference: “…during the reading there must be some who underline the reflections of production methods, others the process of reification, others the sublimation of repression, others the sexual semantic codes, others the metalanguages of the body, others the transgressions of roles, in politics and in private life.”
I thought the passage below was apropos given current concerns about ‘fake news.’ Prescient because this book was first published in 1979.
“We’re in a country where everything that can be falsified has been falsified: paintings in museums, gold ingots, bus tickets. The counterrevolution and the revolution fight with salvos of falsification: the result is that no one can be sure what is true and what is false, the political police simulate revolutionary actions and the revolutionaries disguise themselves as policemen.”
I have liked other works by Calvino such as Invisible Cities (essays), and The Watcher (short stories), but this one just didn’t do it for me. I was lost at times in the narrative and had to re-read to figure out what was going on. But many passages had great insight. I may be short-changing it in rating it a ‘3’ as GR readers overall rate it a ‘4.’
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It’s hard to classify what type of author Calvino (1923-1985) was. Perhaps post-modern best describes this book because of its focus on the acts of reading and writing and what is literature. He wrote 15 or so novels and a couple of dozen collections of short stories and essays. Most of his works involve fables, fantasy, magical realism and even science fiction. If on a Winter’s Night is his best-known novel and Invisible Cities is his most-read collection of stories.
Top photo of Florence from florencephotos.com The author from thenewyorker.com ...more
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