If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino is an amazing novel that takes the reader through an adventure unlike any other known in literature.  The beginning of the novel is particularly odd in the sense that it directly addresses the reader in an informal manner.  The beginning of the novel immediately hooked me in because the comments that Calvino makes were strangely similar to the thoughts that were actually running through my mind.  For example, Calvino is suggesting to the reader that in order to completely fulfill the duties of a reader, one must be comfortable.  Calvino takes this to the extreme and is brave enough to ask, “Do you have to pee?” (4).  Although this is a strange opening chapter, it engaged me as a reader and established an author/reader bond that I had never felt while reading a novel up till that point.  Following the initial address to the reader, the novel is organized in a way that alternates chapters.  One after another, we read a chapter following the characters, Reader and Other Reader, and then we read a chapter that contains the beginning section of a novel, but ends just short of the climax. This cyclical organization is interesting in itself, but it also evokes a sense of frustration in the reader because we want to understand the reasoning behind cutting us off from each story.  None of the short stories are related.  In fact, they are each in a setting incredibly diverse from the others.  I enjoyed this novel because Calvino takes the advice of all of our fourth grade English teachers because he “shows” and doesn’t “tell.”  The reader is challenged to interpret the text for him/herself.  What is the value in reading? What type of experience is reading suppose to provide? The Reader’s quest to find the missing novels is symbolic of our quest as readers to find meaning in what we read and understand the entirety of a novel.