. Spinning .

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 alone–the reader picks up this copy which is the Other Reader’s, and finds that the last word in the title is different from his copy: enlace versus intersect. Would that not possibly indicate that the two readers may read the same book differently?  Maybe not, but it’s a thought.

This story is different entirely (or, it’s the same!) and is about a man whose wealth and power has come from cunning and maneuvering.  He wishes therefore, to avoid the many enemies he has made and has devised a method of evading detection by multiplying the images of himself, his car, his mistress, his company sites; all but his wife. His ideal would be to use mirrors to reflect so many of his images–like a kaleidoscope.  Ultimately, this proves his undoing.

While there is an obvious metaphor in the refractions and intersections of lines and forms in the arrangement of mirrors, I can truly understand it only in its stated context of story, or else when relating to writing and literature, only to the hypertext value of it.

As in a kaleidoscope, the hypothesis I would like to record in these lines break up and diverge, just as before my eyes the map of the city became segmented when I dismantled it piece by piece to locate the crossroads where, according to my informers, the trap would be set for me, and to establish the point at which I would get ahead of my enemies so as to upset their plan in my own favor.  (p. 167)

Calvino may just be simulating narrative structure through plot points, but the simultaneity of the paths as described above would indicate a grid and design assembled atop it.  Roads; links.

(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.