“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade.”
Thus begins Italo Calvino’s novel called … you guessed it.
“… Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion, on two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first.
“… It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of book, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn’t serious.”
He describes going to the bookstore to get the copy of If on a winter’s night a traveler, there running the gamut of all the Books You Haven’t Read. As you are leaving with your new purchase you … “cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companiion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.”
Then the drive home, “… perhaps the bookseller didn’t wrap the volume … you are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip off the transparent wrapping, start reading the first lines. A storm of honking breaks over you …”
The next chapter begins (the start of the ‘real’ book):
“The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph ….”
I love Italo Calvino. I haven’t reread any of his books in a while, so they are almost as good as when new.
-Julie
