If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino

What do you even say about a book like If on a winter’s night a traveler? I normally start these things by writing what the book was a bout, but what would that be in this case? I suppose Winter’s Night is, more than anything else, about the act of reading itself.

The story—or should I say, the book, since we’re not being told a story as such at this point—starts with a description of our physical act of reading, presupposing a specific example of us (the book is in second person, so it really is you, assuming you’re a guy, but he’ll get to that) going to the bookstore and purching the eponymous title. From there, we begin a type of espionage story in which a character follows cryptic advice in order to deliver an unspecified package at a train station. Except the story cuts off at a key moment, leaving us (the fictional us, and maybe also the real us) wanting to know more.

A second trip to the bookstore brings a new book and a chance encounter with a fellow reader—a woman, and presumed love interest—who was likewise bamboozled by the misprinted copy of Winter’s Night. What follows is a trail of different books, each masquerading as something they are not, juxtaposed with an increasingly byzantine—dare I say Kafkaesque—quest to retrieve this growing wishlit of incomplete literature, as stories pile upon stories, styles upon styles, and mysteries upon mysteries. The story caromes satircally of such topics as editors, the fidelity of translation ,and repressive regimes, all the while maintaining a throughline from its very disorientation.

You can’t say much for the character,s since they are either the reader themself or set up as a clear archetype, yet strange undercurrents keep their appearances form feeling cheap or lazy. Even Ludmilla, the prototypical love interest, becomes more than she seems in an interesting passage where the perspective flips, second person beocmes third, and the “you” the narrator speaks to becomes female instead of male.

The entire thing is a metaphysicla exercise that should be taxing, but isn’t. I’m not sure how many writers could have pulled it off. Between this and The Baron in the Trees, it’s clear Calvino is one of the 20th centuries greatest writers. I’ll be reading more soon.

The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer

Gary Gilmore had spent over half of his life in prison when, only several months after getting parole, he killed two men in two separate, cold-blooded, and entirely pointless acts of violence. Both crimes were ostensibly committed during robberies, but Gary didn’t seem that interested in the money and made calculated and deliberate decisions to kill. No one exactly knows why, least fo all Gary.

These events form the fulcrum on which the vast, sprawling narrative of the Executioner’s Song pivots, with the lead-up of Gary’s troubled life pulling down on one end against the counterweight of justice on the other. The result is a powerful, if at times exhausting, work of new journalism, similar in structure to a novel but distinct enough that the subtitle “A True Life Novel” feels more like a bit of marketing than an accurate summary. Mailer uses some of the tools common to novelists—shifting his prose to reflect the points of view of various characters, for instance—but the dry insistance on detail and use of supporting sources feels more journalistic than novelistic.

The story is immense and detailed almost to the point of pedantry, with whole chapters—arguably whole sections—devoted to such anicillary fare as the surrounding media frenzy and quest for life rights. In the book’s second half, Gary becomes almost hollowed out as a figure, the story less about him than about the interests orbiting around him. Still, Gary Gilmore emerges as a complex figure, and Mailer manages to imbue him with a level of humanity that is almost uncomfortabl,e given the atrocity of his crimes.

Mailer’s prose is solid, evocative without hyperbole, shifting sleekly between the florid images of literary fiction and the homespun cadence spoken by the characters who populate the story. I’ve read a couple of his books in the past, but it has been some time and the Executioner’s Song reminded me how much I like his writing.