Reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler felt disorienting right from the start. Instead of easing me into a story, Calvino throws you straight into the act of reading itself. He even addresses “you” as if he is watching you open the book and read the first few pages. At first I found it unsettling and kept waiting for the real plot to begin. It felt like I was stuck in the introduction. But the longer I sat with it, the more I realized that confusion was intentional. The book is telling you a story, while also making sure you are a part of the experience.
I usually read the books for this class on my LONG commute to work. What made the opening surreal for me was reading it on my commute, especially when Calvino says, “Now you are on the bus, standing in the crowd, hanging from a strap by your arm… you’re elbowing your neighbors; apologize, at least.” I was literally on the skytrain, holding onto the overhead strap with one hand and my phone in the other. I could feel myself bumping into the people around me as they entered and exited the train and I felt like Calvino was talking directly to me. It was lowkey kinda trippy and felt like the boundary between the story and my own life had disappeared for a moment.
As I kept reading, I realized there isn’t one single plot to follow. Instead, the novel keeps starting new stories that abruptly stop just as they begin to get interesting. One moment you’re in a foggy railway station with a mysterious suitcase, the next you’re in an entirely different narrative voice, setting, and genre. The “Reader” and the “Other Reader,” Ludmilla, try to track down the correct versions of these interrupted novels, turning the search for the rest of the story into the story itself. Rather than building toward one resolution, the book becomes a chain of beginnings, with each one pulling you close and then denying you closure (kinda like a toxic situationship LOL).
At first this felt frustrating, but I started to see why it matters. The interruptions highlight the desire that keeps readers hooked: the need to know what happens next. Calvino seems less interested in finishing stories than in exploring why we crave them in the first place. The novel also plays with questions of authorship, translation, publishing errors, and authenticity, reminding us just how many unseen forces shape what we read.
By the end, it feels like the real subject isn’t any of the unfinished plots, but the relationship between reader and text. The book suggests that reading isn’t passive consumption but an active process shaped by curiosity and imagination. In that sense, the novel isn’t incomplete but about the endless act of reading itself.
Discussion question: If the novel never gives us a complete story, what does Calvino suggest about why we read and our desire for narrative closure?