Author Archives: susan

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This is a book, most of all, about reading I believe; and for the writer, a book about how a book is read should be of utmost value.  Know thine enemy.  Know your audience. Back in reader mode of Chapter … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’d noticed this before but there’s an instance here that illustrates how Calvino touches on so many areas within one fell swoop of his pen: Every moment you discover there is a new character, you don’t know how many people … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Chapter 2 (!) brings us back into the reading mode of the book, that is, the narrator addressing us as ‘you’ and telling us how to go about returning Calvino’s book because it appears to be a printer’s error in … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I know what the term means in the reality/fiction barrier between narrative and reader, and when it is breached to bring the reader into the story.  This Calvino does to a degree, not by inviting the reader completely into the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Never has an author or a book–at least any that I have read–involved my full attention quite so much not out of difficulty but rather out of an intimacy Calvino forms with the reader who is willing to accept his … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’d read Chapter 1 of this about a month ago when I thought I couldn’t make it through Miller’s Topic of Cancer.  I put it aside when my stubborn nature wouldn’t let me give up on Miller. Tonight I read … Continue reading → Continue reading →