You are now reading a blog post of “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller” written by Italo Calvino. Now’s the time to chill without any distractions. Focus. Clear your mind to the best of your abilities, and perhaps find a place where you can read in peace and quiet. And prepare to reply to this after writing your 400-500 word blog post about the same book earlier. Either you went to the UBC bookstore to get a copy of this or you have chosen to open up the pdf file on the RMST 202 website. Or you managed to find a very detailed summary somewhere on the web. Regardless, you feel ready to talk about this piece of literature with other readers.
You initially understand the contents of this blog post, but as it delves into the deeper analyses of the books as well as how all fragments connect to an author’s perspective on their writings, psychology, and a general larger picture – you lose track of the whole argument.
You then close your device in silence after staring blankly at your screen for a few moments. Maybe it’s a laptop, a tablet, a phone, a PC. You then proceed to wonder why you even bothered clicking on this blog post instead of someone else’s.
Let me just state my opinion on this: this book is utterly frustrating yet incredibly funny to read.
It’s like discovering a new TV series where each episode there’s a new story with a new set of characters and it always ends on a cliffhanger (with their true endings never to be found) – causing you to have an existential crisis why you even bothered to watch the next episodes when you know how they’re going to end. Whenever the Reader tries to read any book in the novel, there’s always either a publishing error or a supernatural force for the purpose of plot convenience (ex – like a certain book being banned in a country the Reader travels to) that prevents the Reader from ever finishing a book…
Which is honestly very clever, since it’s stated in the beginning where the Narrator warns us Calvino has a reputation for changing his style from book to book (which we can see in the books within the book, if that makes sense). From an author’s perspective, it is certainly a fun way to implement stories that you’ve worked on yet couldn’t finish. And from my experience, I’ve found it funny (and felt called out by it) because I have been guilty of doing the same in my writings: I constantly feel the urge to start new writing projects when there are multiple unfinished documents in my Google Drive collecting dust and crying to be finished. So sometimes I just have the idea to either repurpose certain details from an older draft or insert a paragraph as an excerpt of a book that a character happens to be reading.
I also think that the mini books can be a representation of people we meet in our lives. In some way, we meet and pass by acquaintances and classmates – where we only get to know a small part (or a chapter, some may say) about themselves before moving on. Nothing more. And in that case, rarely do you ever get to actually finish reading a book – because there’s always something more to discover about a person.
What are your thoughts on Calvino’s writing style, and how does it compare to your own? How did you feel about never knowing the true resolution to the mini books scattered throughout the plot?