If On a Winter's NIghts a Traveler

The novel If on a Winter’s Nights a Traveler is quite unique in the sense that it takes how we as readers view literature. There is little cohesive story but that’s where the brilliance of the book is shown. The most important part of this story is the form of the narrative. The narrator isn’t really explained but what Calvino does is talk to the reader using the word you quite a lot. In the first chapter, the narration tells the reader to get comfortable and describes how the reader should read the book. It almost makes the narrative seem like a living breathing person. I was tempted to describe the narration as a he or she but that wouldn’t be factual. The narration attempts to personify itself and almost leads us to believe it is a person or that it is possibly Calvino himself. It cannot be Calvino however because of the first sentence of the book. “You are about to read Italo Calvino’s new novel” (Calvino,3). This implies that this narrator isn’t Calvino otherwise he would be speaking in third person about himself, which would be grammatically incorrect.

This unusual narration is a fresh take on how we read. In experimenting with a second person narrative Calvino provides insight not only on the effect of doing so, but also forces us to examine how we read books with more traditional narration.