I’ll start off by saying that without a doubt I LOVED Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler. It felt new, it felt refreshing, it felt different. In one of my other classes, we have been discussing the concepts of tropes and how they are effective mechanisms in writing. Essentially, what makes a story good is that it uses these tropes to its advantage as providing a resolution or reaction to some form of a climax. However, as we have so evidently seen in this book, there is no such thing as a resolution to a climax for the reader. I think that’s what makes this such an interesting read because it uses the concepts of tropes to its advantage to build a climax, but yet the reader is constantly faced with a sense of dissatisfaction. The protagonist does eventually get some form of a resolution at the end (although one that can be debated to continue), but I found the constant frustration of yearning for that satisfaction to be highly entertaining.
I think if I were to pick a favourite story that if I was the reader I would also hunt down Ermes Marana and demand answers, it would definitely be Looks down in the gathering shadow. I really want to know more about the drama between the protagonist and Jojo and simply just read more about Bernadette being a girlboss who I think betrays him at the end. I also particularly liked how that story was narrated because there was almost this sort of nonchalance with the protagonist yet you could still feel how his character was driven by the need for revenge due to his past with Jojo. (However the mention of the tapeworm in this chapter gave me ptsd from the time of the doves).
This line is particular I loved from Looks down in the gathering shadow
“Because even remembering evil can be a pleasure when the evil is mixed with I won’t say good, but with variety, the volatile, the changeable, in other words with what I can also call good, which is the pleasure of seeing things from a distance and narrating them as what is past.” (94).
In reference to the title of my blog, I think that I actually enjoyed the dizziness and the jumping around from climax to climax more than I thought I would. This is because I was equally invested in the reader’s endeavors and found his story equally as interesting as the stories he would read. I found the whole theme of the boundaries between the reader, the text, and the audience to be extremely intriguing. I think this was reiterated throughout the book with the emphasis of using the form of tu instead of usted. From my understanding, you would typically use the usted form when addressing someone you don’t know or as a form of respect to an elder or authority figure as a more formal conjugation whereas the use of tu would be used in more informal terms. I feel like the use of tu created a more intimate and personal experience and engaged my role as the reader in this novel even though technically I was not meant to be Calvino’s target audience as the reader. I know this novel was originally published in Italian so that also makes me wonder if this distinction is recognized in Italian as well?
My question for this week would be: Which story in the book would you consider continuing to read and why?