. Spinning .

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.