If on a winter's night a traveler
Reviews
loved at the beginning lost me in the middle but by the end i was like wait this fucks. i think a fun writing exercise for the madman and a fun reading exercise for me
Very clever and interesting book. Entirely different from anything I've ever read before, though I'm sure it would be even better in Italian.
A volte ero tentata a guardare fuori dal finestrino
really wasn’t speaking to me — somewhat frustrating to read, which i think is kind of the point — so when it got too male-gazey near the end i dropped it.
من قشنگ داشتم فضای بارش فکری رو می‌دیدم؛ و خب، بارش فکری‌های خودم برام جالب‌ترن. کسی که این رو به من معرّفی کرد، گفت «پست مدرنیسم»ه و از این‌حرفا؛ انسجام که نداشت، موضوع داستانی مشخّص که نداشت، همه‌ش هم فکر می‌کرد که می‌دونه من به چی فکر می‌کنم ولی نمی‌دونست. [و این خیلی روی اعصاب بود] مثلاً از کل خصوصیات یه‌زنِ توی یه‌بار، فقط شکل کمربندِ پالتوش رو توصیف کرده؛ خط بعد این‌ه که: «من می‌دونم که می‌خوای بدونی چه‌شکلی‌ه.»؛ در حالی که من اصلاً به این‌موضوع فکر نمی‌کردم. و وقتی رفتم این‌چیزها رو به اون‌فرد می‌گم، می‌گه که توی ساختارهای قدیمی گیر کردی و نمی‌تونی ساختارهای جدید رو بپذیری، انصافاً این‌طوری هم نیست که هر نوشته‌ای که منسجم نبود/هرچی رو بگم بَده، ولی دیگه بارش فکری آخه؟ :/
The gimmick, somehow, doesn’t wear off. A delight.
This book was not written with love.
Put aside until I can give it more attention.
Very experimental fiction work that was a slog to read but presents an interesting study for writers on how a novelist can "break the rules" or challenge the structure of novel writing. Also provides some deep yet obscure reflections on reading, writing, the book industry, books, academia, language, etc.
"“Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.” I really appreciate the risk that Calvino took with this novel. I will be picking up Calvino's Invisible Cities later on in the year. He's got me intrigued. Read for the International Reads Book Club. I will be sharing my in-depth thoughts on the novel at the end of the month on the groups Goodreads page. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/116231-international-reads
I read this for a book group, and it has some many different ways of being written, it was very interesting. the reader is addressed in the second person, and off we go on an adventure, where you read 10 beginnings of other books, plus some intrigue and a bit of romance. all is all, different and interesting!
My favourite book of all time. A delightful, slightly insane postmodernist masterpiece.
idk i prefer the ancestors trilogy
In English at the bottom. È meraviglioso. L'ho letto in italiano ovviamente. Una delle prose più belle, Calvino è il narratore italiano per eccellenza. Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore sono dodici racconti chiusi una cornice al di là dell'inverosimile. Il Lettore passa le giornate a ricorrere la fine dei libri che per un caso o per l'altro gli vengono strappati di mano. Interessante che i nomi dei capitoli diano l'inizio a un'altra storia. Passando alla recensione vera e propria devo dire che la prosa è ben fatta, la trama è consistente e strutturata e la narrazione, a parte alcuni tratti, è coinvolgente. L'unica pecca è che nessuno lo conosce abbastanza. Wonderful. I've read it in Italian, but Calvino is the Perfect Italian Narrator. The plot is quite complicated, there are twelve stories in a frame of a Reader who tries to end the books he reads. In this frame he has to run around the world to get a copy readable. At the conclusion I had a sensation of not-finished-yet of the story, the chapters name tell another story begins.
** spoiler alert ** In this book, Calvino is using a quite interesting technique in capturing the readers attention. He keeps starting new stories in the book, and I kept getting the "I-want-to-know-more"-feeling. I do find it a bit frustrating that he doesn't tell the ending in any of the stories, but it has to be that way in order to be coherent with the storyline. There are a few passages that I had to struggle through, but all in all it is quite interesting to read.
Wow, this book was a total mind-fuck! I need to reread to totally appreciate it.
Highlights
If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few ines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it.
Long novels today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years.
With the revolution, there are people who change so much they become inrecognizable, and other people who feel they are the same selves as before. It must be a sign that they were prepared in advance for the new times.
“i am looking for Mr. Kauderer,” I said to him. He answered, “Mr. Kauderer is not here. But since the cemetery is the home of those who are not here, come in.”
I realize that for a long time I have tended to reduce the presence of darkness in my life. The doctors' prohibition of going out after sunset has confined me for months within the boundaries of the daytime world. But this is not all: the fact is that I find in the day's light, in this diffused, pale, almost shadowless luminosity, a darkness deeper than the night’s.
You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything.
Su una sedia a sdraio, sul terrazzo d'uno chalet in fondo valle, c'e una giovane donna che legge. Tutti i giorni prima di mettermi al lavoro resto un po' di tempo a guardarla col cannocchiale. In quest'aria trasparente e sottile mi pare di cogliere nella sua figura immobile i segni di quel movimento invisibile che è la lettura, lo scorrere dello sguardo e del respiro, ma più ancora il percorso delle parole attraverso la persona, il loro fluire o arrestarsi, gli slanci, gli indugi, le pause, I'attenzione che si concentra o si disperde, i ritorni indietro, quel percorso che sembra uniforme e invece è sempre mutevole e accidentato.
... La tua casa, essendo il luogo in cui tu leggi, può dirci qual è il posto che i libri hanno nella tua vita, se sono una difesa che tu metti avanti per tener lontano il mondo di fuori, un sogno in cui sprofondi come una droga, oppure se sono dei ponti che getti verso il fuori, verso il mondo che t'interessa tanto da volerne moltiplicare e dilatare le dimensioni attraverso i libri.
…lei s'abbandona alla corrente della lettura come all'unico atto di vita possibile in un mondo in cui non resta che sabbia arida su strati di bitume oleoso e rischio di morte per ragion di Stato e spartizione di fonti d'energia...
... Chissà cosa legge. So che non è un mio libro e istintivamente ne soffro, sento la gelosia dei miei libri che vorrebbero esser letti come legge lei. Non mi stanco di guardarla: sembra abitare in una sfera sospesa in un altro tempo e in un altro spazio.
Life is nothing but trading smells.
Forse la donna che osservo col cannocchiale sa quello che dovrei scrivere; ossia non lo sa, perché appunto aspetta da me che io scriva quel che non sa; ma ciò che lei sa con certezza è la sua attesa, quel vuoto che le mie parole dovrebbero riempire.