About this title: A postmodern novel which combines a love and a detective story with a sardonic dissection of the publishing industry in an allegory of reading. Two readers attempt to finish the same book, but are comically and repeatedly frustrated.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Mariner Books
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780156439619ISBN:0156439611
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Text in English, Italian. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 276 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good- As issued No Jacket. Slight spine lean, corner bumps, corner crease to the front cover, front cover curls up a bit, and other light shopwear. read more
Description: New. 0156439611 NEW! NEVER USED! . There are no highlights, No pen marks, No missing pages. The binding is sturdy. Upgraded shipping on orders over $49.99. Customer Satisfaction Guaranteed! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780156439619ISBN:0156439611
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. clean tight copy, light corner wear. Text in English, Italian. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 260 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harvest Books
Date Published: 1982-10-20
ISBN-13:9780156439619ISBN:0156439611
Description: Very Good. Used for class has some underlining and notes. No highlighting. Cover shows some wear or creases. You're gonna love this book! read more
Description: Very Good. B0029LHWMM **Softcover**--different later cover, same content--cover has shelf wear at tips of corners and minor cover crease or curl, minor Spine Creasing, No personalizations, No marks in the text at all. Tight and well bound. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Date Published: 1993
ISBN-13:9780679420255ISBN:0679420258
Description: Fine. No dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 304 p. Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics. Audience: General/trade. 61123. As new read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Mariner Books
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780156439619ISBN:0156439611
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean and unmarked with some edgewear. Text in English, Italian. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 276 p. Audience: General/trade. Ships from US-NE. Support Independent Booksellers! Omahabooks offers same or next day shipping-satisfaction guaranteed. APO, International may require additional postage-contact seller. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harvest/HBJ Book
Date Published: 1982
ISBN-13:9780156439619ISBN:0156439611
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Text in English, Italian. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 276 p. Audience: General/trade. Book is in excellent condition. Cover and pages are clean, binding is tight. We ship daily, Satisfaction Guaranteed. read more
Description: Near Fine. This 5.5 x 7.5 trade paperback book has the author's name and title in black and green lettering on the white spine and in green lettering on the white/illustrated cover. Italy's most brilliant writer shows that the novel, far from being a dead form, is capable of endless mutations. 260 pages. Clean with tight binding in Near Fine condition. read more
"Not only would I recommend this book to a friend, I give the book to my friends.
YOU are reading a book. After the story gets really interesting you find that the book has been misbound. Trying to find the contininuation, you go to the publisher who directs you to a room full of miscellaneous books. You pick one up and begin reading, but just when the story gets really interesting...."
"If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, it would require a thee-dimensional model, perhaps four-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space. - Italo Calvino
A masterpiece.
This is for those who love reading, enjoy the written word, and want to be taken for a ride.
Most people who have attempted to read this give up in frustration and I can see why. For the first third of the book, Calvino plays a game with the reader. He opens a narrative then pulls you out into a meta narrative in which the author is talking to the reader (you) and lets you go to slip back into the story only to pull you out again, every time at increasingly inopportune moments.
This is annoying but what he is doing is preparing you for the novel. It is like waking up from a dream but falling back into it to find out how it turns out. Getting through this intentional fog is not easy. Only dedicated readers will endure this warm up for the main act, which has already begun without your knowledge.
Calvino openly declares what he is doing but, like the addict lining up the hit while pusher describes what is going to happen, you take it because you have tasted what can come and are already in the haze.
This is an easier book to describe than Invisible Cities, but it needs to be experienced in order to get the full satisfaction of a craftsman doing what he does best.
If you can keep up, and it is not easy with this book, you will finish the book with a smile on your face and shaking you head at the brilliance of the creation you have just read.
Written in 1979, the language and the references to printing are dated, but the passion flowing from the pages into your head sure as heck is not. Calvino knows his readers, his writing, and how to tell a surprising story.
If you want a challenge that will pay off mightily, check it out. I highly recommend it.
I would like to be able to write a book that is only an incipit that maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning, the expectation still not focused on an object. But how could such a book be constructed? Would it break off after the first paragraph? Would the preliminaries be prolonged indefinitely? Would it set the beginnings of one tale inside another, as in the Arabian Nights? - Italo Calvino"
"Calvino is an absolute genius when it comes to considering and exploring new and unique narrative techniques. He is also a damn fine story teller as well. With his desire to explore and be adventurous his approach to writing his novels is often risky to the point of driving away some readers, I am not one of those readers. Instead I am a reader who marvels at the skill with which he manipulates every small detail within his books to prove a point of drive home the meaning behind what he is doing. Considered his masterpiece by many, 'On a Winter's Night a Traveler' is a book entirely about writing, reading and just books in general. Calvino starts his book by seizing you, the reader, and immediately making you into one of his characters. He then tries to convince you the book you are reading might not actually be the book Calvino wrote by starting a narrative and then cutting it off. The rest of the book is then a series of cut off narratives all parodying the techniques used in the kind of dime a dozen novels that are usually the most popular. None-of these narratives are presumed by the book to be the real Calvino narrative. Ultimately Calvino teaches you some things about novels and your reading of novels that tries to discover the essence of reading and writing, what is the experience all about. This book is at points frustrating but it is a work of genius and a must read for readers or writers who to spend a little time thinking about what it means to read and write."
"You are starting to read Branduno's review of Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. But something is stopping you. Perhaps you are on a library's public computer and the staff are telling you to hurry up, get out, there is a waiting list. Or maybe it is more peaceful: you are at home, sitting down to your own laptop. But your elderly uncle has just started to loudly play Wii in the next room. You can't take it.
"Be quiet!" you yell. "I am about to start reading Branduno's review of Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler!"
But as you finally settle down to read it in comfort and silence you find that Branduno hasn't reviewed anything at all, and you decide that it really would be best to find a copy of the book and see for yourself what it is about."
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