Book 1.5 If on a winter’s night… Who’s the author?
On page 117 there is a passage in If on a winter’s night a traveler about authorship. The premise of the passage is a great bit of imagination: Suppose there was this wheezing, shroom-popping old man, and suppose he was the author of all of the world’s stories? Or, as Calvino describes him, the “primordial … Continue reading
Book 1.4 If on a winter’s night… The Male Gaze
The main character in If on a winter’s night a traveler is “You,” the reader. As I wrote before, this isn’t unlike the old Choose Your Own Adventure books where the hero was actually “You,” the person reading the book. (Some other books that do the “second-person” thing are Robbins’ Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas … Continue reading
Book 1.3 If on a winter’s night a traveler
Italo Calvino’s writing gets me thinking about the importance of words, how they can, when treated conscientiously, carry great weight both on their own and in the company of their neighbors. Calvino’s writing is bright and he avoids a lot of highfalutin Latinates. Perhaps this is thanks to William Weaver’s translation, perhaps because Italian has a … Continue reading
Book 1.2 If on a winter’s night a traveler
Reading about yourself reading the book. Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler opens with an eye-widening phrase: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.” That’s true, I think to myself. Then the author uses polite directives on how to read his book. … Continue reading
Book 1.1 If on a winter’s night a traveler
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. This is a blog about books, about reading them and understanding the writers who write them. I remember a line that Stephen King (who makes it into this blog’s canon by a whisker) wrote … Continue reading
Letters Republic 