If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Evan

To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and the when in which you vanished.

a book so decadent in its form. Calvino mastered the art of unfolding what it is reading, writing and a story is. though each story draws you in, its quite clear it was written to be unfinished, abrupt, all over the place. absolute delight.

solitones

A meta-absurdist-experimental comedy that does a pretty good job at expressing the author's love for books and can keep you chuckling along the way. Some parts are a slog as the author indulges with a train of thought too much, leaving some stretches feeling very long-winded, but overall this is pretty good stuff.

I did not know going into the book that Italo Calvino was a follower of a group/mindset that put restrictions on their writing in an effort to stay sharp or experiment. "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" is a book 'comprised of first chapters' as part of this challenge. There is also a throughline with a character reading these first chapters (and this character is "You"). It was interesting: lots of these first chapters had paranoid characters or people looking for meaning in something. The character reading these ("You") was also on the hunt for meaning, and also, more simply, just wanted to finish all of the books he was starting.

Characters give their philosophy on books, what they mean to them, and what they're looking for in a book. Some characters are constantly shifting in their pursuits and seemingly will never be satisfied; some have pursuits that are insane, such as unlearning how to read. It's largely amusing, though again, some of it just stretches too long. I don't know if I needed 10 first chapters and their narrative-linked interludes, I'll bet 7 would have been fine.

Overall, worth checking out if you love books as much as Calvino did. It wouldn't surprise me if this was more beautiful in its original language, but I think the translator did a great job at keeping the writing colorful.

I recommend "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" to fans of the medium.

A meta-absurdist-experimental comedy that does a pretty good job at expressing the author's love for books and can keep you chuckling along the way. Some parts are a slog as the author indulges with a train of thought too much, leaving some stretches feeling very long-winded, but overall this is pretty good stuff.

  

I did not know going into the book that Italo Calvino was a follower of a group/mindset that put restrictions on their writing in an effort to stay sharp or experiment. "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" is a book 'comprised of first chapters' as part of this challenge. There is also a throughline with a character reading these first chapters (and this character is "You"). It was interesting: lots of these first chapters had paranoid characters or people looking for meaning in something. The character reading these ("You") was also on the hunt for meaning, and also, more simply, just wanted to finish all of the books he was starting.

Characters give their philosophy on books, what they mean to them, and what they're looking for in a book. Some characters are constantly shifting in their pursuits and seemingly will never be satisfied; some have pursuits that are insane, such as unlearning how to read. It's largely amusing, though again, some of it just stretches too long. I don't know if I needed 10 first chapters and their narrative-linked interludes, I'll bet 7 would have been fine.

  

Overall, worth checking out if you love books as much as Calvino did. It wouldn't surprise me if this was more beautiful in its original language, but I think the translator did a great job at keeping the writing colorful.

I recommend "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller" to fans of the medium.

Clay Carey

D D D 

peyton mckenzie

give me a least a month of solitude and silence to process.

Faith Ho 

you pick up a book on the shelf in kinokuniya; the name is familiar, so you begin to read it. you are two chapters and utterly immersed in it when your family starts calling you to leave, and so you leave it behind (because you are broke), and later you find it in the library, continuing where you left off and smiling every time the author mentions “you” buying the book because you didn’t. 

so begins this novel - though i hesitate to call it that, because it is more like a collection of short stories (or “first chapters” of novels), with a singular storyline linking them; of You, who wanders around trying to find a finished novel, but merely stumbles upon more and more novels that you never end up reading past the first chapter. 

"and here you are in pursuit of all these shadows together, those of the imagination and those of life." 

it’s very experimental and meta in the extreme; a profound meditation on what it means to read, to write: the relationship between the reader and the writer, reader and the book, books and the writer, and words, words, and words. of course, as both a fairly proficient reader and a rather unproficient writer, i loved it. i took so many pictures of the pages because some sentences just illuminated a flash of insight; others were just beautiful (particularly when it cleverly incorporated the idea of this being a story while painting such atmospheric lines). there’s a mystic, ephemeral quality to the writing - i can’t quite describe it. treated the fragmented novels as short stories and i loved them (perhaps excepting one slightly dubious one); how they hinted at a world before and beyond that glimpse of a novel (after all, "reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be...")

"her way of living in the world, filled with interest in what the world can give her, dismisses the egocentric abyss of the suicide's novel that ends by sinking into itself. in her voice you seek the confirmation of your need to cling to the things that exist, to read what is written and nothing else, dispelling the ghosts that escape your grasp." 

i only wish that i had the chance to sit down with this for one day and finish it in one sitting; my fragmented reading over weeks did it not enough justice, i’m afraid, and neither did my tired brain.

Prashanth Srivatsa

One of the most uniquely styled novels in terms of narrative, where you're thrust in the midst of a global publishing scam through a misprinted book that leads you on a journey to find the true story. Calvino drags you to the edge of the seat time and again, promising you something spectacular, and then reveals nothing but a deep, dark chasm, poisoning your curiosity to an extent where you actually consider yourself the protagonist of the novel. In all ways, that's what he intended. The plot, despite the jumps, is fluid, and the final reveal, where the relationship between a reader and his book is explored, is terrific. I'd probably never read this book again, but to read it once alone has been immensely satisfying.

Ri Liu

I’ve never read a book that has acknowledged me so much as a fellow human before. I like its adventures with playing around with the 4th wall. A clever and lithe book.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

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