Hi all,

Well, third time reading this book and I'm finally getting a handle on it! First time through I was really only interested in the story of the first person, Ludmilla and hunt for the missing books, the basic frame of the work. The interior stories were a major distraction. The second time I added the "author" character and his problems to my interests. This most recent time I am looking more closely at the stories. I also read the introduction by Peter Washington this time, it was very helpful.

It seems that on one level, Calvino was responding to the literary community in this little novel. Michael Foucault and company had said that Readers bring all meaning to a work and Calvino was playing with that idea. When Authors and publishers or printers make mistakes in books all Readers notice. If a page is reproduced twice or three times, all Readers notice. If the pages are not cut, all readers notice. And if the physical book stops prior to the story winding up, all Readers notice. This is not within the realm of an individual Reader's meaning. It is the realm of the material book, pages and meaningful symbols and covers.

Yet the Reader is involved in creating the meaning. In the opening chapters the Reader is intimately involved with the Author in creating, in writing, the story. This is so funny! It turns Foucault on his head by saying that the Reader writes the story during Authorial production. (tee hee)

On that same level, good-naturedly arguing with Foucault, Calvino is also writing from an Author's point of view. Does an Author care what a Reader thinks? You bet! Some Authors torture themselves, others simply produce. They both watch Readers. But with a Reader centered meaning, the Author is completely left out the minute the work leaves his typewriter. Calvino laughs at this in Chapter 8.

On another level, Calvino wanted to create a novel that continued to have new beginnings. Hence, many stories. Each story is like a new beginning. Each story has an opening line with the renewed promise of a great tale. And he touches many types of story, love, intrigue, a mystery, political satire, a tale of academia, even a literary bio. But just as the reader gets intrigued, he drops back into the "real world" of the story frame. But! The main story is framed also, and very specifically, by the interaction between the author and the reader and the author's directions about how to sit, etc, as well as where the reader can go and not go. The idea that the reader cannot go somewhere defines it, puts it into consciousness.

Finally this is a book of relationships. There are the relationships between the Author and Reader 1, Author and Reader 2, Author and Reader 3 (the woman, but that might be Reader 2). There is the relationship between Readers 1 and 2 and the Non-Reader. (The author seems to have nothing to do with Non-Reader...lol) There is the relationship between authors and finally, there is the physical level love relationship between Reader 1 and Reader 2. About the two Readers; they are male and female. The female seems to read for escape, the male to learn. The female seems quite passive, the male more aggressive. This is standard Calvino fare, a complaint to which he responds in Chapter 8 where the Reader is a woman.

This is a very interesting book. Calvino's style is so dreamlike and magical. He is totally ingenious in his approach to structure, voice and tone. He is postmodern but never so angry or detached as most of the other writers. In fact it is his playfulness and humor that I so dearly love. (When I get through it and understand what he's doing!) (lol)

I know there is more I wanted to say about this book but I can't remember it right now and you, dear Reader, are probably tired of this post anyway. If I think of it I'll send it along later. :)

I'm still comparing the stories to t

Becky

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