About this title: Calvino's masterpiece opens with a scene that's reassuringly commonplace: apparently. Indeed, it's taking place now. A reader goes into a bookshop to buy a book: not any book, but the latest Calvino, the book you are holding in your hands. Or is it? Are you the reader? Is this the book? Beware. All assumptions are dangerous on this most bewitching ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099430896ISBN:0099430894
Description: Very Good. Size: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches; Clean, tight. Some shelf wear. Calvino's masterpiece opens with a scene that's reassuringly commonplace: apparently. Indeed, it's taking place now. A reader goes into a bookshop to buy a book: not any book, but the latest Calvino, the book you are holding in your hands. Or is it? Are you the reader? Is this the book? Beware. All assumptions are dangerous on this most bewitching switch-back ride to the heart of storytelling. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Key Porter Books
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9781550136845ISBN:1550136844
Description: New. Brand New Paperback, clean, tight, unmarked, no spine or cover creases All orders are shipped by kbooks every business day. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780749399238ISBN:0749399236
Description: Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Minerva, London
Date Published: 1992
ISBN-13:9780749399238ISBN:0749399236
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. (A145_5/9)Book is in NEW condition. Text in English, Italian. 258p.; 20 cm. Originally published: London: Secker & Warburg, 1981. read more
Edition: NEW ED
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: VINTAGE Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099430896ISBN:0099430894
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 272 pages. (258 pages) leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary, and a quest. edition new ed (Paperback) read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Lester & Orpen Dennys, Toronto
Date Published: 1981
ISBN-13:9780919630451ISBN:0919630456
Description: Very Good in Very Good jacket. Pages: 260; Weight: 1lb 1oz; Size: 9.1" x 5.9" x 1". Jacket has light rubbing and edgewear, book cover is clean and square, signs of paging on front edge, otherwise clean, unmarked, tight. read more
Edition: First UK edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Secker & Warburg, London
Date Published: 1981
Description: Fine in fine jacket. Hard back. Dust jacket. 8vo. 260 pages. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. Fine / Fine condition. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099430896ISBN:0099430894
Description: New. Leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary, and a quest. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of only minimal use. All pages are undamaged with no significant creases or tears. With pride from Motor City. All books guaranteed. Best Service, Best Prices. read more
Description: Good. Minimal damage to cover and binding. Pages show light use. With pride from Motor City. All books guaranteed. Best Service, Best Prices. read more
Description: Very good. Appearance of only slight previous use. Cover and binding show a little wear. All pages are undamaged with potentially only a few, small markings. Help save a tree. Buy all your used books from Green Earth Books. Read. Recycle and Reuse! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780099430896ISBN:0099430894
Description: Good. Our aim is to create an overall satisfying buying experience for our customers through the provision of affordable books and a personalized approach to customer service. read more
Description: New. DISPATCHED FROM UNITED KINGDOM. NO EXPEDITED SHIPPING! Please note orders are confirmed immediately and may take 2-3 business days to ship. This processing time is in addition to the shipping time. Please allow 10-14 days for delivery. Brand new item. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: G20091214045929D. read more
"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."
"Italo Calvino's book, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, begins by assaulting the reader:
"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell; "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone."
And so goes the opening paragraph. The entire introduction is an encouragement to read, with the punchline being that Calvino himself is delaying your reading of his novel!
But don't think this book a non-fiction. The book is in fact a text that is part short story collection, part novel within a novel, part commentary on reading, and part... well, I don't know... It's hard to say. The format follows The Reader and The Other Reader (the latter a woman named Ludmilla) as they go through reading ten very different novels, never quite finishing any one. As the characters find themselves not finishing their novels, so do the readers of Calvino's book.
Interspersed through these engaging vignettes are some very interesting ideas on what reading means and how different types of reading can affect the way a story is perceived. In showing us this view into his mind, Calvino in effect plays a magic trick on the reader by affecting the way his very novel is read. Unlike authors who try to immerse you in the worlds of their novels, Calvino takes his words and encourages them to float off the page, insisting that you be reminded over and over again that you are, in fact, reading the novel. His idea becomes then to not "let the world around you fade" but to capture it and celebrate it in text.
The texts themselves are far from humdrum. In fact, their stories are so absorbing that it is no wonder that some readers simply can't take it. Consisting of everything from romances to typical airport thrillers to strange science fiction, the stories remain threaded together by the equally enthralling experience of the two characters. For those who find the Reader and Other Reader less compelling than the stories they read, frustration is definitely a given. Hence, this novel is not for everyone.
In the MTV generation of fast-moving everything, it's hard to believe that this novel doesn't have some place among those not interested in a unique and entertaining treatise on reading and writing, but it's very possible that we're just not as finicky as we thought. There's no doubt in my mind that Calvino tells a great story. In fact, he tells several great stories. Still, keep in mind the caveat that picking up this novel is not the same as picking up a focused one-story narrative novel; it's not even the same as picking up a collection of short stories.
Still, the novel as a whole is funny, suspenseful, thought-provoking, and, yes, frustrating. It is a love note to the act of reading, and a love note to all kinds of readers. And, sometimes, love hurts. It's possible that Calvino derives some kind of masochistic enjoyment from playing with the readers, and it's possible that those who get to the end of the novel are masochists themselves. Still, it is also possible that Calvino is letting his readers in on a delicious secret, if only they are willing to stay for the ride."
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