. Spinning .

(I’m duplicating this particular section in Hypercompendia as it truly relates to hypertext)

We are in the center of a discussion regarding the Reader and the Other Reader and their eventual intimacy, thus bringing them together just as has the reading of a novel.  Calvino here notes the differences in reading and the act of sex, and yet in the hypertext format, the difference is nearly eliminated.  In fact, this passage brings to mind Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl.

Lovers’ reading of each other’s bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear.  It starts at any point, skips, repeats itself, goes awkward, insists, ramifies in simultaneous divergent messages, converges again, has moments of irritation, turns the page, finds its place, gets lost.  A direction can be recognized in it, a route to an end, since it tends toward a climax, and with this end in view it arranges rhythmic phases, metrical scnasions, recurrence of motives.  But is the climax really the end? Or is the race toward that end opposed by another drive which works in the opposite direction, swimming against the moments, recovering time?  (p. 156)

In Hypertext, there is a ‘whole’ of narrative that is made up of bits of data or information that may or may not be necessary to the full understanding or enjoyment of the story.  Similar to the familiar ‘maybe she liked that but I sure as hell don’t’ with learning of what turns a particular person on sexually. A tweak that doesn’t work may be a metaphor that grants insight that only few will find meaningful. 

As an aside, I love the way Calvino uses language that suits what he is saying, i.e., "rhythmic phases."

I found this particularly interesting: "But is the climax really the end?"

What better said description of the first reading of a hypertext piece?  I know I always find myself wondering what I’ve missed, what wrong turns I’ve made (we’re talking about hypertext here!) and if I have come out of the story with the same sense of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) had I taken an alternate route.  Am I judging what I’ve held as the meaning of the story with knowledge of all data necessary to come up with an honestly based conclusion?

The neat part of hypertext then, is that like sex, you want to go back and do it again.

Still in the setting of the sexual comparison/contrast to the literary:

If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-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. (p. 156)

That gap in time, that near-loss of awareness except for the focus on pleasure–in the sexual act–or in the missing stages of story that bring one to a new point that is recognizable yet obvious in that it is not contiguous with what has just been read.

Sex as white space.

In this portion of Chapter 7, Calvino turns to address the 2nd Person POV to both Readers at one time, since they have ‘become one’ in bed.  Even while he likens the sexual act to reading as in reading bodies, he teaches still.

Calvino on close reading:

And you, too, O Reader, are meanwhile an object of reading: the Other Reader now is reviewing your body as if skimming the index, and at some moments she consults it as if griped by sudden and specific curiosities, then she lingers, questioning it and waiting till a silent answer reaches her, as if every partial inspection interested her only in the light of a wider spatial reconnaissance. (p. 155)

This addresses for me the layers of literature, the meanings that can be found by the individual reader and not necessarily intended or at the least, the particular intent of the author.  Calvino goes nearer the heart of individual reading here:

Meanwhile, in the satisfaction you receive from her way of reading you, from the textual quotations of your physical objectivity, you begin to harbor a doubt: that she is not reading you, single and whole as you are, but using you, using fragments of you detached from the context to construct for herself a ghostly partner, known to her alone, in the penumbra of her semiconsciousness, and what she is deciphering is this apocryphal visitor, not you. (p. 156)

This touches upon Barthes’ death of the author.  What the reader does is pick and choose among the full display of phrases, ideas, prose that has been carefully chosen and toiled over by the author, to instead not only bring to it new meaning, but also take from the reading only those selections to inhabit a space that is separate from the piece of work, but a portion of a whole (or ghostly partner) created by the reader.

Too, while the concept of reading ‘someone’ (mind, body, etc.) is not by any means new, here we have the specific thought of portions, pieces, experience that are both put into and taken out of what we read.

Once again, wow.

Just when I get the old Marquez/McCarthy feeling that I needn’t ever write another word Calvino jumps up and verifies my thoughts:

But how to establish the exact moment in which a story begins? Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. (p. 153)

Even in the present tense, a word read is in the past. "I see" becomes "I saw" simultaneously with the reading–no, with the writing.  All written then, puts a different meaning to the term "flash fiction."  Calvino goes on:

Or else the real story is the one that begins ten or a hundred pages further on, and everything that precedes it is only prologue. 

So here he is referring to the narrative structure and noting that, even linear, it’s beginning point may be unknown because it has indeed occurred, but is not necessarily written down; nor can it ever be.

The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest–for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both–must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.

While Calvino is focusing on the characters of a story (a main plot being the meeting and changing of the two), he may also be including the past of the reader, since I, we, whoever, is reading this particular book is so involved as to be a character himself.

Calvino, in this last paragraph above, also appears to expand on the notion of "after" as strongly as "before."  Prime hypertext manner of thinking.  The story need not end, it need not start here or here or there, and endings are continually changing.

Another lesson on writing from Calvino, and his method is one of showing, then hinting, then telling in case you didn’t get it:

A glance into the refrigerator allows other valuable date to be gathered: in the egg slots only one egg remains; of lemons there is only a half and that half-dried; in other words, in basic supplies a certain neglect is noted.  On the other hand, there is chestnut puree, black olives, a little jar of salsify or horseradish: it is clear that when shopping you succumb to the lure of the goods on display and don’t bear in mind what is lacking at home. (p. 143)

And here it is, the lesson spelled out for us:

Observing your kitchen, therefore, can create a picture of you as an extroverted, clearsighted woman, sensual and methodical; you make your practical sense serve your imagination.

Calvino is making these words serve double duty.  Even as he tells us how an author might make a story full and rich, he is doing so.  Up to this point we’ve had little to go on to imagine Ludmilla; we each, however, have formed some sort of image of her.  Here, in the defined Second Person of ‘you’, is some detail that he controls. 

He controls.  Think about it.

It is possible that I’m learning more from this one novel about writing than in all else, or perhaps it is what I have learned that is recognizable in it.

The main story, that is, the one that is continuous and is marked by chapter numbering as sequential, is of two readers who seek out the mystery behind a book entitled "If on a winter’s night a traveler" since it is never contiguous but rather ends abruptly to begin a new story to frustrate the readers.  This main story is written in the second person point of view (you) and involves another reader (Other Reader, or Ludmilla) whom ‘you’ are interested in as a romantic possibility. 

But watch this, in Chapter 7:

We live in a uniform civilization, within well-defined cultural models: furnishings, decorative elements, blankets, record player have been chosen among a certain number of given possibilities.  What can they reveal to you about what she is really like?

What are you like, Other Reader?  It is time for this book in the second person to address itself no longer to a general male you, perhaps brother and double of a hypocrite I, but directly to you who appeared already in the second chapter as the Third Person necessary for the novel to be a novel, for something to happen between that male Second Person and the female Third, for something to take form, develop, or deteriorate according to the phases of human events.  (p. 141)

In the first paragraph, we have the original and continuous Second Person waiting for the Other Reader (Ludmilla) in her apartment.  There is more here, I believe, than a reference to the expected versus the unexpected in Calvino’s "uniform civilization."  I think that is made clearer by the second paragraph which switches the Second Person to being the Other Reader (Ludmilla).  Calvino, I think, is poking fun at the norms not of society in general, but specifically at what is accepted as literary trend and propriety. In the second paragraph above, he states "necessary for the novel to be a novel…"  Necessary according to whom?  He continues:

Or, rather, to follow the mental models through which we attribute to human events the meanings that allow them to be lived.

Wow.

No doubt in my mind, in this section Calvino is teaching the reader the glories of hypertext.  Even the title indicates the track he’s on: In a network of lines that enlace.

First we have an idea of what words can and cannot do:

The first sensation this should convey is what I feel when I hear the telephone ring; I say "should" because I doubt that written words can give even a partial idea of it:  it is not enough to declare that my reaction is one of refusal, of flight from this…(p. 132)

But here’s the exciting part:

Perhaps the mistake lies in establishing that at the beginning I and a telephone are in a finate space such as my house would be, whereas what I must communicate is my situation with regard to numerous telephones that ring; these telephones are perhaps not calling me, have no relation to me, bu the mere fact that I can be called to a telephone suffices to make it possible or at least conceivable that I may be called by all telephones. (133)

Back in the first person, Calvino has provided us with an image of an enclosure, the house, then proceeds to open it up into possibilities that include every telephone within every house.  These, of course, are linked by lines and networks.  As the narrator goes down the street on his morning run, he wonders if a phone ringing in one of his neighbors’ houses might still be a call meant for him.

He feels that someone can follow him and can still reach him wherever he is.  The story does include intrigue beyond the structure of possibilities, and in fact, the reader will be surprised by how the narrator is tied in and reached by the hypertext of the telephone line.

In nearly every book, even the so-called best, there comes the part that drags.  Chapter 6 for me was that.

In what should have been an extremely interesting chapter that tells much about the mystery of the many stories and screwed-up printing of the novel in question, there’s a definite mish-mash of information that seems implausible.  It is also pushing the reader beyond the point where he has been most willing to accept the nonconformity of this novel. 

With the blame now placed on a translator, the translator in turn has turned the blame on an author with writer’s block.  There seemed to me to be an overload of information and the misdirection and theories are heaped upon each other in a rather confusing explanation of events.

There is another lead-in to yet another story and I must say that I’m anxious to move on.  I shall also admit that I’ve been hopping around a bit in this last important chapter, skipping parts, going back and rereading, but still with a certain wariness; a certain weariness.

Calvino has made a practice here of saying and doing. He is explaining writing tricks and traits even as he pulls them.  He explains critique as easily as he explains audience.  Audience, after all, is what this novel is about; the reader.

Would you like to be in his place, to establish that exclusive bond, that communion of inner rhythm, that is achieved through a book’s being read at the same time by two people, as you thought possible with Ludmilla?  You cannot help giving the faceless lady reader evoked by Marana the features of the Other Reader whom you know; you already see Ludmilla among the mosquito nets, lying on her side, the wave of her hair flowing on the page, in the enervating season of the monsoons… (p. 125)

Two things being presented here.  The first is the idea of the reader filling in the details that are missing, drawing upon his own experience to supply him with a more complete picture that is within his comfort zone.  He is thus relating to the setting, story, and character.  In supplying a face to a character, he is forming a relationship of empathy with the character.  In this case, the reader’s interest in Ludmilla has softened the character of the mysterious Sultana of Arabia. He has made the connection because both are readers, both are powerful women in their hold via reading over their men; and both are barely approachable.

We assign memories to our readings.  Our readings then change our memories.  Barthes?

Well Calvino’s got everybody in here–I didn’t even post on what he had to say about publishers–and here may be a little poke at the genre of ‘literary’ or those, perhaps, who don’t quite know how to categorize it:

"According to the more pessimistic rumors, he has started writing a diary, a notebook of reflections, in which nothing ever happens, only moods and the description of the landscape he contemplates for hours from his balcony, through a spyglass…"  (p. 121)

I’m not sure if the statement there is disdain for those who navel-gaze or those who merely jealous, call it so.

Thinking of my own many, many stories started, often just a paragraph or two, sometimes a few pages, I cannot help but envy Calvino this novel chance to create from scraps and pieces.

His stories do intrigue.  In Looks down in the gathering shadow we do find an entirely different set of characters and scenery.  Or do we?

I’ve done the bit of puzzle-izing over the titles of these stories interspersed between the chapters of the ‘main’ story.  Obviously there must be a clue in the non-capitalization of all the words of the titles, no?  I have put them together and as yet, in sequence they still do not make sense. But maybe they will eventually and I can still claim cleverness for having rooted out the solution to the mystery.

This story is of a man who has murdered a pursuer from his past and with the help of a young woman tries to rid himself of the body.  But the man tells us a more interesting tale: he comes from many pasts and thought he’d free himself from one by starting over.  Unfortunately, he comes to the realization that they do not erase themselves, but rather they accumulate to become yet a heavier burden.

And then it hits me: Perhaps he is one and the same in every story; perhaps these are not new characters at all…

Calvino certainly keeps you thinking not only of the tales he weaves but more–at least for this reader–the how of them.

No, not because of the threesome in the story prior to this, Chapter 5, but rather that the thought occurred to me that if this novel were to be held to sexual standards, that’s where it’d likely settle most comfortably, in the realm of kinky.

It goes beyond the point of view to bring such innovation into the first and second person that includes the reader in its intricate web of intrigue.  The last book that I read that touched on the idea of so intimate an access to a novel being written was Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds. Calvino brings everybody into the novel to stand there alongside you; here, a history of writers:

"What does the name of an author on the jacket matter? Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now.  Who knows which books from our period will be saved, and who knows which authors’ names will be remembered?  Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; other authors’ names will still be well known, but none of their works will survive, as was the case with Socrates; or perhaps all the surviving books will be attributed to a single, mysterious author, like Homer."  (p. 101)

This, (the above) was the response from the translator who put the impossibly mixed up versions of several novels into being.

There is such a free flow of time travel here, not only because of the different stories that the main story readers are pursuing, but in bringing in the reader of this whole work itself.  It plays with and off and against all the rules of narrative.  It does not accept that this goes here and that should follow, but rather tests and explores as one would go beyond missionary position.

I will want to read more of Calvino’s work, but I can already say, halfway through this novel, that it’s one of my favorite books.

Chapter 5–the numbered chapters being the story of the 2nd person narrator who along with the Other Reader (Ludmilla) each purchased the book "If on a winter’s night a traveler" only to find that it is a series of unrelated story beginnings (which are here, in the REAL Calvino book, as every other section).  I had just noted that two of the "stories" out of the four were unrelated, though two others were related–if only to each other.  Yet here, in Chapter 5, I read this:

Seated at a cafe table, you sum up the situation, you and Ludmilla.  "To recapitulate: Without fear of wind or vertigo is not Leaning from the steep slope, which, in turn, is not Outside the town of Malbork, which is quite different from If on a winter’s night a traveler.  The only thing we can do is go to the source of all this confusion."  (p. 91)

But that’s not true!  The second story, Outside the town of Malbork, has the first person narrator about to leave his home in Kudgiwa to exchange places with another young man and with any luck, he will also find out more about a girl whose picture the young man carries, a lady by the name of Zwida Ozkart.  There is also mention of Mr. Kauderer, and of his estate at Petkwo.

In the third story, Leaning from the steep slope, it appears that this same character is now at his destination, and he does meet up with Mr. Kauderer as well as the young Zwida.

So what gives?  Is it possible that Calvino has thrown a curve here, perhaps the introduction of an unreliable narrator in the chapters of the one path of story that admittedly continues unbroken?

Ludilla appears to agree, however.  So is it me?

In this next section of the bought book our narrator is reading, the story begins with new characters and setting. Titled "Without fear of wind or vertigo," it takes place in what seems to be a war zone of a country on the brink of revolution.  Therefore, we have intrigue and mystery; we also have some romance in the manner of menage a trois.

Calvino’s strange way of talking about reading and writing the same story he is telling is losing its intrusive quality and it becomes more natural as I read along:

I am narrating this incident in all its details because–not immediately, but afterward–it was considered a premonition of everything that was to happen, and also because all these images of the period must cross the page like the army vehicles crossing the city (even if the words "army vehicles" evoke somewhat indefinite images; it’s not bad for a certain indefiniteness to remain in the air, appropriate for the confusion of the period)…(p. 79)

It is not mere journal-form here, wherein the author may write with the understanding by the reader that the words are meant specifically as documentation, perhaps, or a diary of a certain time.  The words above supposedly are from a novel–albeit within another novel.  Calvino appears to do something, that is, use an element of style, and then proceed to explain and examine it.

On another point, Calvino does not shy away from sensuality in writing, but puts it in a most eloquent manner:

I tried to escape, insinuating myself with crawling movements toward the center of the spirals, where the lines slithered like serpents following the writing of Irina’s limbs, supple and restless, in a slow dance where it is not the rhythm that counts but the knotting and loosening of serpentine lines.  There are two serpents whose heads Irina grasps with her hands, and they react to her grasp, intensifying their own aptitude for rectilinear penetration, which she was insisting, on the contrary, that the maximum of controlled power should correspond to a reptile pliability bending to overtake her in impossible contortions. (p. 89)

Given Calvino’s simple setup for this scene, that the trio are inseparable, there can be no doubt as to the menage a trois taking place here, confirmed by the "two serpents whose heads Irina grasps…"  The plot point, however, is not to inject the reading with sex itself, but to emphasize both the relationship of the trio and to concentrate on the language used in describing the scene: rectilinear, serpentine.  Calvino is drawing lines here that the male characters are desperate to uphold and yet Irina is determined to maneuver into graceful curves.

With the next section of the "corrected" novel our narrator is reading we have a break in pattern; precisely, by a connection with the previous story in the book.  The reason for feeling the novel was improperly printed was the entrance of completely different characters, and yet we find that these two chapters do continue a moving story.

Then we get to Chapter 4 of the book (we are holding physically) and we meet the Other Reader, Ludmilla, and her sister, Lotaria who seem to be at odds about most things, and in particular, the validity of the book in question.

Lots of stories going on here.  Lots of disconnected connections. Links?