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 Cloven Viscount - Italo Calvino

The Cloven Viscount is the first book in a trilogy called Our Ancestors. I read the second book, The Baron in the Trees, already, but the sequence of books doesn't seem especially important, as there is no connection between them in terms of plot or characters. Instead, the link between them is thematic, as each is set in a period of Italy's past and uses fantasy to explore the society found in that time.

In the Cloven Viscount, the eponymous nobleman Medardo of Terralba is cut in half by a cannonball. His two sides both live, with his right side encompassing all of the Viscount's evil, and the left side all of his good. Medardo's nephew narrates the story, but he remains so firmly in the background that you often forget he is a character.

The story reads as a parable, eschewing realism in favor of archetypes. The characters aren't psychologically complex, but the structure of the story is such that this feels like a deliberate choice and not a weakness. It reads a little like a fairy tale, in that the characters aren't meant to be seen as actual people, but rather as instruments to get at some deeper truth embedded in the story itself. The writing likewise reflects this approach, it simple eloquence belying its poetic richness and depth.

I adored The Baron in the Trees, and though Viscount didn't grip me with quite the same intensity, it was still excellent and encourages me to read the final book in the trilogy.

The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino

My god, I wish I came across this book when I was 13. I loved it at 33, and don't doubt I'll love it just as much when I eventually reread it (which I'm sure I will), but I think I would have loved it even more then. And not simply for its content—though as an avid tree-climber it would doubtless have gripped me--but for its melancholic whimsy. It reminds me in tone of Winnie the Pooh and, in a sense harder to define, of Louis Sachar’s Wayside books. Stories that seemed so fully realised that as a child I fell into them, walked about their pages for a while, and emerged at the final chapter ever so slightly changed.

The main character is Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo, who at the age of 12 has a fight with his father over dinner that leads him to climb into the trees and never come down. The story is narrated by his younger brother, who often relies on secondhand information and freely admits that certain passages are supposition on his part--a device that lends both uncertainty and verisimilitude to the story. The rest of the book is an episodic chronicling of Cosimo's life in the trees, with passages both prosaic (his inventive solutions for toiletry, sleep, and commerce) and heroic (battles with pirates and treacherous Jesuits). I loved the former as much as the latter, and the whole story flows effortless as a long campfire fable.

The prose is translated from the Italian, but retains a bit of Mediterranean flavour, evocative but not florid. It avoids the common pitfall of first person narratives where the narrator takes on the cadence of capital N Narration, losing the voice of the person who is supposedly telling the story. I never doubted the voice used here.

Italo Calvino is a name I'd heard for some time but never pursued, knowing nothing about him apart from that he was an author. I found The Baron in the Trees as a fluke, as it was mentioned in the comments of a Guardian article about a man who spent 2 years in a tree. Such happy accidents reinforce the value of always keeping an ear out for new titles. Sometimes the best stories come to you from unexpected places.