Author Archives: susan

Evidently Lotaria has a very different view towards reading for context: She explained to me that a suitably programmed computer can read a novel in a few minutes and record the list of all the words contained in the text, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Coincidence seems to happen more often as you get older, or maybe you are just more aware.  One of yesterday’s posts in Hypercompendia notes the change in writing style an author may undergo that makes ‘old’ writing nearly unrecognizable as … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Readerly/Writerly, Shmeaderly/Shmiterly.  Had Barthes proposed his theories in Calvino-speak, I would have embraced them more readily. My resistance was not completely due to my stubborn streak but as much, I would think, to his manner of presenting them. Here’s Calvino: … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In Chapter 8 we get a closer look at the supposed author of the book(s) that our Readers seek, and that is Silas Flannery. He is a mysterious figure, and one of the most intriguing as Calvino uses him to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In this section, In a network of lines that intersect, I get the feeling that there is a hint of what a reader ‘writes’ into the story he is reading.  Since both readers have this particular book–going by the cover … Continue reading → Continue reading →

(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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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.  … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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; … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →