Calvino leaves the reader questioning again

            In Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler the reader is not reading just one novel, but ends up following ten different stories within this larger piece. Each has a different plot, author and style. The author, Calvino, inserts his opinion for how the reader should act and think by interrupting each novel within the larger novel.

            From the first sentence the reader fully emerges into what is written on the page. The opening sentence reads, “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concrete. Dispel every thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door…” (3). Throughout the novel there are many passages similar to this one where the author is speaking to the reader instructing him or her on how to read this book to what to think about what is going on in one of the stories. In this narrative style by not only speaking directly to the reader but by using the second person “you” the reader is not a bystander to what is occurring in this novel, but becomes the protagonist.

            I preferred reading the chapters where Calvino would use the “you” or tell the reader what something means in the novel. Because there were so many different stories to follow I didn’t pay as much attention to what was going on in those, but paid more attention to the parts where Calvino did speak to the reader. After reading Invisible Cities where the description of each city was not as important as the dialogue between Macro and the emperor I went into this novel thinking the same. I became fascinated in my part in the novel and how I should be reading what is going on.

            Calvino says, “Reading is always this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present,” (72). There are many comments like this throughout the novel where the written word is this and we, as readers need to see us within whatever this written word may be.

            There is also a quotation on page 109 where Calvino tells the reader that he is writing all these stories because he wants the reader to navigate themselves around and in these stories. A story exists in a certain space that cannot be altered, but a person can see the space differently. Again, it comes down to perspective and who the reader is. He often refers to the two readers reading the same book from the outside, but once they stare at the pages the story becomes two different novels. This is true for all kinds of book. Calvino begins to get at universal truths through his writing and challenges the reader to not look at this novel as a singular piece of work but to look at it as a metaphor or guide for how to read other books.