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Summary: WOW
Review: Calvino is a master. Having read _Traveler_ and _Italian Folktales_ I have come to believe that Calvino can write in more styles, effectively, than any other author I have ever come across. Picking up If on a winter's night a traveler will not be a mistake, especially if you're looking for something new. I'd reached a point where I had largely given up on literature being interesting, until I found Calvino and Eco and I could reread each of these men's works many, many times and find it more interesting than almost and American author I know.Definitely recommended.
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Summary: A terrific novel about reading
Review: ========================= QUOTE: In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You've Been Planning To Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified. Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them. With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new). ========================= It took me three reads to really enjoy this book (although the above catalogue of types of books delighted me immediately), but it's one of my favorites. The plot, such as it is, is about the Reader's quest to finish reading a book. It's a very difficult book to explain. At heart, though, the plot isn't what makes me like the book so much: I enjoy its discussion of why and how people read. It's tremendously entertaining and thought-provoking as well.
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Summary: Inventive and Fun
Review: If on a winter's night a traveler is a very inventive and fun book that clearly illustrates the importance of the reader in a story. Without readers, Calvino asks, where would storytellers be? Anyone looking for a conventional plot and character development won't find it here, but Calvino does manage to entertain as he teaches. If on a winter's night a traveler is filed with puzzles and surprises, almost on every page, right to the very last sentence. My only criticism of the book, and this is slight, is that, although not long, it seemed to be a little too long for an unconventional work. I would have enjoyed the book more had Calvino not written quite as much. As I said, this is not for readers looking for a conventional storyline and characters. But if you're looking for something a little different, something very creative and something fun, If on a winter's night a traveler would be hard to beat. Definitely a five star treat.
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Summary: Don't read this if you can't stand open endings
Review: This book is amazing. I have never had so much respect for an author. Italo Calvino manages to write over ten stories all with a completely different voice and all completely engrossing. This book is not for those who can't stand books that break "the rules." Neither is it a book for those who don't like it when stories do not have a definitive ending, because the majority of his stories never finish. By the way, many people have complained about the ending of the book. I thought it was intelectually one of the best endings of any book I've ever read. Maybe other people didn't get it, maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Hmmmm... probably the latter. Nevertheless, I still loved this book.
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Summary: A sidenote
Review: Approximately 61 people have already written a review as it is. I think through them the story is mainly covered, as an interesting side note to attest to this books widely received critical acclaim and appreciation of the skill in which it is mastered it has been a set text for Extension English students in the New HSC here in NSW, Australia for the final year of School. I shan't say much more than that other than its a wonderfully complex book working on many levels and the skill of the author is well deserving of all praise and honour
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Summary: Calvino is only one laughing
Review: The inevitable question with metafiction of almost any flavor or style, running the gammet from Jorge Luis Borges to Richard Brautigan, is really a pretty simple one: who is having more fun here? Because there is no small amount of fun to be had between the bindings of Italo Calvino's "novel," If on a winter's night a traverler. As an experiment in the nature of literature, in the nature of the dialogue conducted between writer and reader, between artist and audience, a robust kind of hermit-scholar sense of humor abounds throughout, one taking sometimes insightful and sometimes self-indulgent pot shots at everything from popular fiction to the modern univesrity to second-wave feminism to the medium of the novel itself. It takes a sense of humor to actually compose ten different, incomplete story fragrments, each taking their various cues and nuances from the respective pillars of Calvino's canon. There's the chekov-inspired/parody of "Outside the town of Malbork," there's the Notes from Underground tinged "Leaning from the steep slope," there's spy novels and sentimentality and whole other load of interesting gibberish that may seem really innovative and insightful if one is ignorant to how derivitive Calvino's own style and method really is here. Aside from his aforementioned sense of humor, the elements of Calvino's novel which seem to justify its existence(i.e. - the second person narration, the belabored metafiction cliches, even the obnoxious, self-satisfied tone of a writer who has already decided that the reader will be entranced and hypnotized by the end of the first sentence) have all been done to death already by similarly dissaffected european scholars (either by blood or by mindset) Calvino is really at his best here between the fragments, following the nameless second-person narrator and the sisters Ludmilla and Loratia through their odyssy of untranslated manuscripts and printing errors until their eventual marriage(?), a plot line that ends on a week note, certainly, but is, at heart, the most honest, sincere portion of the novel. If metafiction is to work at all, it must be because it is used as a device to more clearly illuminate the voice of the author him/herself as a three-dimensional human character and the closest Calvino comes to doing that here is in his exploration of what it really means to enjoy art, "to read," as so many of Ludmilla's lines begin. Its just unfortunate that such an admirable exlporation had to wind up so cloaked in sarcastic device and narrative scaffolding that it could not have been done in a way that still maintains some respect for the reader of Calvino's own novel. Thus, unfortunately, the answer to the question posed above here is that it is the author, without question, is the one having the most fun, and more power to him. If any readers are still willing to subject themseleves to Calvino's projection and irony, may they persevere, for there is something to be gained from it. It's just not a very pretty ride.
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Summary: A commentary on joys of literature and escapism
Review: I've had the experience of reading various modernistic novels written by authors ranging in times and settings. Yet never have I read a novel quite like that of Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. The novel is a brilliantly crafted story which guarantees surprises and an inevitably enjoyable reading experience. The novel is written in a form, style, and structure all its own in that it doesn't follow any set pattern or formula except that of taking the reader of guard with its highs and lows. The novel is essentially comprised of the first chapter of ten different novels to which the reader both in the story and in actuality is never given the opportunity to complete. This is set against the backdrop of a love story between Reader One and Reader Two both of whom are victims of the same fate; a botched novel. In what appears to be a comic pursuit both readers one and two continue to hunt down the original novel in order to rest their minds and progress through the work as a whole. Throughout they encounter chapter after chapter of what they believe to be the next part of the novel in pursuit but then realize it is but another botched chapter. Yet through the course of what can sometimes be viewed as pure madness, both reader one and two find each other and are married at the story's end. The novel seems to make an interesting statement regarding literature, which can be taken one of two ways. On one hand the reader may question whether or not the characters in the novel are genuinely concerned with the literature they are pursuing or are using the pursuit for the novel as a catalyst to develop their romantic relationship. On the other hand perhaps their relationship is second to the love they share for the literary experience and attaining the knowledge that one receives through the power of reading is reward enough. In addition there is a certain escapism that can be attained through the pursuit of literature. In If on a Winter's Night... each new chapter of "the" novel represents an escape from perceived reality. In the flip flopping of chapters between the perceived reality and the alleged next chapter of the novel in question I know I found myself longing to enter the next phase and escape. This is in fact the greatest joy of the reading experience; the ability to experience the illusions that you mold into reality. The most ingenious element of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is the dynamic and intriguing style in which it is written. Each chapter has a different movement and structure and style and gives the illusion that each chapter may indeed be written by one of the supposed authors mentioned. The telling of the story is what defines this essentially wonderful novel.
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Summary: One of my favorite books
Review: Though I had to stop and restart reading this magical book several times. I really enjoyed it.
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Summary: Calvino is an International Treasure
Review: Of all my reading over the last twenty years this book is the one that has stayed with me the most strongly. This is not because it has the best plot or the best characterisation, or because it has the best start or the best ending, or because it was the easiest novel to read. It's impact lies in the fact that it is a novel about reading novels, about the romance of reading - and the frustration too. In a sense, this novel actually taught me to read. The ten chapters are each written in a different style and Calvino plays with the effects these styles have on the reader. I loved the sense of frustration at knowing only the first chapter of each of the books would ever come to light. I read this just after leaving Umberto Eco's 'The Name of the Rose' on a train in France - the sensation was both infuriating and delightful and this is what Calvino conjures up here. While the hero may never get his novel finished, there is at least some potential for him to finally meet with the elusive Ludmilla. Will he get the girl? You'll have to read the start of ten novels to find out!
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Summary: Delictably different
Review: There are those who word it better than I on these pages, but to say this book is a different reading experience is an almost humorous understatement. Admittedly, I initially had difficulty accessing the piece. The first chapters are almost agonizingly difficult to concentrate through. I set the book down twice with thoughts of abandoning the effort. Yet, it's a device most clever, like the audio equivalent of attuning a distorted signal to razor-sharp clarity of compelling proportions. My patience was rewarded; but more importantly, Calvino forced me to examine myself in a very different fashion -- to notice every feeling, every nuance about my reading process -- and proved the entire experience is much more than simply reading a novel: it's an experiment with our own consciousness. The Plot is the plot, nothing more need you know. May you find as much here with this book as I did.
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