If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

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Summary: Imagine: a movie where You will be played by Tom Cruise
Review: This brilliant, funny, ingenious, unusual and amazingly inventive novel is one of the finest to be written anywhere in the world since the war. On the first page we are introduced to an persistent, thorough, thoughtful person who is intelligent and ... attractive. That person is You. You are about to read Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. On the first page You are about to read and the narrator tells You how to sit down, how to adjust the light, make sure You have cigarettes nearby in case You smoke. You soon encounter Calvino's wonderful lists. (My favorite one is list of categories of Books, such as Books You Haven't Read, Books You Needn't Read; Books that if You Had more than One Life You would Certainly also Read But Unfortunately Your Days are Numbered; Books You Mean to Read But There are Others You Must Read First, and The Books that Everbody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them too.) You start reading If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, and You find it is the tale of intrigue in a railway station, but just as it gets interesting You find the first 16 pages have been reprinted over and over again. You go to the bookstore and you are given the correct novel, which is not in fact the Correct novel at all but an interesting tale of Polish village intrigue called "Outside the Town of Malbrok." And just as this book gets interesting you find that the pages have been all bound together. And You go and find Yourself going back to the bookstore and finding a new novel, different from the previous two novels and go on until You find there are ten separate opening chapters and the various foul-ups and printing errors and mistakes are all the result of a fiending conspiracy against literature. In the course of the novel You meet a wonderful woman named Ludmilla who You will eventually marry... And at the end You will find yourself at one of the best happy endings of all of literature with a perfect closing line. There is no excuse for not reading this book.

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Summary: Calvino's best. Brilliant meta-novel. Positively exquisite.
Review: This book should quite possibly be titled (and yes, i know changing the title would disrupt one of the prime conciets of the book) 'I, Italo Calvino, will now demonstrate my vast intellectual superiority, while attacking many of the staid conventions of "fiction", and actually making you smile and/or laugh, as well.'

OK, that really shouldn't be considered for the title, but I think you get my point. This intricate novel alternately screws with the very notion of narration, plot, the idea of fiction, the act of reading/being a reader, and well. . . . pretty much everything you've become bored of.

That fact is, if you're here your probably somewhat interested, and if you're even somewhat interested you should go on and pick up this book. Granted, if you have a problem with parallel narration (it is all linear narration), or are frustarted easily by lack of plot resolution, you might step catiously. Also, if you're tolerance for witty authors who know they are witty is low, you definately want to steer clear- Calvino is flexing his synapses here, and having an absolutely good time.

As far as the plot (or story or whatever) goes, it's almost ancilliary, yet absolutely necessary, insofar as the point of the book is reading it, but the 'getting' goes on on such a blatant level, that it's almost like finding a meditative state in the vibrations of a chainsaw while someone's trying to cut your head off with it. or something like that.

Anyway, this book, like . . . rocks.

Especially recommended for curing post-academia, post-new critical theory, ficiton phobia- After graduation I only read non-fiction up until this book restored my faith in the written word.

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Summary: who enjoy this book the most, was Calvino. writing it.
Review: probably one of the best work of italian 1900 literature. All though appears that Calvino creates a piece of art (or maybe a masterpiece) that seems to say: "look what I`m capable of writing" more than: "look what I have writen for you to enjoy". The whole novel is infact a pure literature virtuousism, in which Calvino shows his immence knowledge and creativity jumping from style to style,from technic to technic, from subject to subject etc... (touching each of them with the same confidence and mastery) without ever allowing the reader the time to actually enjoy any of them. Not only that: Calvino, in this literature odyssey through (virtually) every existing writing styles, ends up cruely teasing the reader. givin him just a taste of what he (or she) loves the most out of all the different type of novels, for than changing immidiatly again; as in " of course I could write like this too... but... I`m not goin to." For thise reason in some part of the book you might feel like you don't like it.. or that, Calvino doesn't write too good... but that is only because the way YOU like a book to be writen, is just around the next page, and as soon as that will come, you might feel like this is the best book you have ever read! but then again .. it`s over, and in the next page the book changes again.

To really enjoy this book you have to be able to say: "that`s the beauty of it!" and it is , is brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and engaging
Review: "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" is one of the most original and engaging books I have read. Like the title, the books is a group of unfinished stories bound together by one continuous story. The protgonist is desperate to finish the book he has, but finds that each successive copy he gets has a different story that ends abruptly as if there were pages missing. This resembles the magic realism of Marquez (except that Calvino's protagonist has a more plausible story) or the outlandish stories of Kafka, except that Calvino's outlook is romantic and positive. While the idea of a book with a bunch of unfinished stories seems to be torture to read, Calvino keeps it together (and the reader engrossed) with his delicate and readable style.

When I read some of the simple and uninteresting fiction that I come across, lately, I think of Calvino's unusual little book and think there is still hope for creativity and imagination.

Rating:
Summary: A Genuine Masterpiece of Invention
Review: If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino's inventive discourse, is a genuine masterpiece of convolution, evolution and conversation; a work of synthesis that draws upon traditional narrative and then revises, creating and recreating images and perspectives on reading, writing, perception and reflection in the postmodern world.

Particularly insightful is Chapter Eight which contains the diaries of a writer in doubt and poised on the brink of a novel; the entire work, however, explodes readership in a fresh and fascinating way. An immensely tantalizing read, this book can be as irksome as a fly behind your ear or as softly appealing as a lover's kiss. It is, above all a deeply satisfying and brilliantly original book and one that cuts through the excesses of fiction like a lawn mower cutting through new spring grass. Calvino reels off ideas like fireworks on the Fourth of July and he provides us with an ending that is sharper and sweeter than pink lemonade on a hot summer's day.

This book is a perfect literary vacation: refreshing, rejuvenating and simply delicious with new twists and turns around every bend. It definitely takes us places we have never been before, but absolutely hope to see again. The prose is alternately dreamy, sensual, crystaline and precise, but always perfect.

With levels of organization as complex as a molecule of DNA, the ten stories that make up If On a Winter's Night a Traveler is a true joie de vivre and is unique among modern novels.

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Summary: Best Book I have ever read
Review: When I first bought this book and read the first few pages, I fell in love. This is the absolute epitamy of classic novels. One reviewer said that the sub-novels were not very "deep," but I completely disagree and feel that is where all the meaning is. In the case of the Hand coming through the prison bars and viewed by the Narrator: the connection of the physicallity of the human hand to his own: the relation ship between his role in society and the prisoners! Amazing! And the human condition of Responding to a ringing telephone! Brilliant. I spent a entire semester in college using one of these stories as the backbone to an Architecture design project. It is not a book to read fast. Read one or two chapters a day or else you will get confused with so many new plots. The best book I have ever read. ~jerry

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Summary: let yourself be manipulated
Review: Read Chapter 1. Finished Chapter 1. Began Chapter 2. Scratched my head. Finished chapter 2. Began chapter 3. Began laughing at the game Calvino was playing with me. And wondering what he was going to do to me next.

I would never have guessed all the different roads I would go down as I read this book.

You'll fall in love. You'll pull your hair out. You'll throw the book across the room. And then you'll go pick it up again.

Any attempts to describe this book any better than this will either not be well-understood or will ruin the effect of discovering it for yourself.

If you are prepared to put aside your standard concepts of literary narrative and explore a new experiment, this book is definitely for you.

Rating:
Summary: You want it.
Review: You don't get one book, you don't get two, you get a dozen. Your money is well-spent. You're happy. And then you read it and you are disturbed beyond recognition; you are lost. You want to stop but you can't - you want to find out how it ends. But it doesn't end - you just become more frustrated for every potential end is a definite new start, a new story as the other doesn't conclude. You read on, and then you read again. And again. And again. The only way to get it, is to read it over and over again - and it's tempting, for the writing is good. And then they ask you what it was about - you ask "which book?", "which part?". And then you get mad. And you go and read it again, over and over again. For it is a mighty novel, made out of more than words. You know you want it.

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Summary: Reading this book is like peeling an onion...
Review: there are so many layers to it. Each chapter is a new novel, and each novel is intriguing in itself, though they all hang together beautifully in comprising the final product. If you've never read Calvino, this is a very good book to start with.

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Summary: maze of authorship
Review: Traveler is not a novel for everyone. If you reqiure a "good story," this is probably not it, if only for your use of diction. For fans of imagintive storytelling and interesting narrative (Borges, Grillet, things of this nature), it is essential. This is not a book in the tradional sense, of course. The main part of understanding and enjoying it stems from fully immersing yourself in the text; realizing the parallels Calvino is constantly drawing metaphorically regarding the hypothetical reader and hypothetical auteur - an incredibly vast meditation on writing and reading I will not get into here and leave you to discover for yourself. While the book plodded along at times [hence the 4], I can overlook this for Calvino's vision. Although I can say nothing about the original Italian, the English translation is fairly good from a technical standpoint, with many magical passages contained therein. Give it a try if you've come this far!