What the freak man. ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller’ was genuinely so trippy I am half confused but also very intrigued. To start off, i’ve never read something with this writing style before, my actions being narrated by someone else felt weirdly unsettling and kinda like a tutorial for how to feel/act. I don’t know, this was conflicting for me as I feel the enjoyment of a book is to interpret and make connections to it in your own way, but with Calvino over my shoulder constantly telling me the right way to think kinda impeded on that.
But that’s just one aspect that bothered me, otherwise Calvino did an amazing job on investing the reader (ME) into the book (omg now i’m writing like them). The way the author describes surroundings and how it feels to be there, present, standing in an area was so surreal – especially mentioning all the smoke, it added to the anonymous field where faces and places are indistinguishable. The writing style is unique and foreign, Its nice to know that there’s so many writing styles i’ve yet to discover. If this is Calvino’s trademark then good job to them. I almost felt as if I was dissociating into the book – a piece that flows like a conversation but I can’t respond.
On another note, I almost feel like I didn’t get to experience the true nature and intention of this book soley because I didn’t have the physical copy, I keep thinking how cool would it have been to actively open the book, read the sentences and follow Calvino’s instructions directly while becoming completely immersed in a ‘breaking the third wall experience’. But whatever we ball.
Getting into the novels stories, as someone who gets bored easily reading something for a while, I really enjoyed the multiple unfinished stories. It also arose an interesting thought for me where I realized that whenever I’m bored of a book I just stop reading and carry on later (or never…) but I was uno reversed here where the stories where cut off really confusingly with BASICALLY NO END? … even when I wanted to continue. The one time I wanna finish a story on my own terms and instead the author gets to ghost me. It’s a love and hate relationship.
Random note: the author sometimes capitalizes every word? why? kinda strange – distracts me from reading because it looks so ungrammatical. WAIT THEORY he is trying to add that ‘something is wrong factor’. spooky.
To end this off I shall quote a song that describes how I felt after reading this “I always feel like somebody’s watching MEE, and I have no privacy” – Rockwell
Question: Does the narrator make you feel more immersed in the story or more controlled by it?
anyways thanks for reading – BYEBYE.
“The one time I wanna finish a story on my own terms and instead the author gets to ghost me.” Aha! Imagine if you had a physical copy. But I was also struck by what you mentioned about the relationship between boredom and the need for an ending… Is it more of a psychological comfort to know that something has an end, even if we don’t personally reach it? As if the important thing is that it exists in some way, even if we don’t feel obligated to fulfill that mandate?
Okay. I really like this question because I just. I was constantly coming back to the idea that the way Calvino applies second perspective (which, props to him for doing what most writers don’t and playing around with 2nd person) feels very controlling, at least to me. He does leave some wiggle room by going ‘yeah you can be discreet. We don’t know what your age or job or anything is’ but then he sort of goes ahead and takes over the way we would theoretically go about our relationships by establishing that we are a man. Not saying that he should’ve made us a woman, because that would add an even more specific context to the story that would’ve then taken away from the ‘you’re a character in the book!’ energy. Man I should’ve written this in my blog.
Anyways, great thoughts on the book! Definitely agree that having a physical copy would have made the experience different, considering that our relationship to the story / novel is the core of the story.
For me I felt more controlled by it. Especially in the beginning when he is literally instructing the reader to get comfortable even though it is impossible to find that perfect position of comfort while reading had me so self-aware and fidgeting to find it!
Hello! To answer your discussion question, I felt controlled by the story. Maybe the fact that the narrator is a male had already put up a limit to the extent i have understood from the narrators lens, I could not see it as me!