/lit/ - Literature

>>23496233
that's nice. this is probably the first /lit/ rec I read in highschool.

post books you read more than once

>Some important works of fiction deserve another look, another read, even some forty years after their original publication. Such is Italo Calvino’s tour de force of a novel—published originally in Italian as Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore in 1979
>one of the most creative works about reading and writing fiction that I have ever read.

>The book begins with
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.
>His narrator leads You Reader into a bookstore to buy the book (this book)
>The scene in the bookstore describes how You Reader selects the book to be read, picking the book (this book) up
>On page 9 the narrator says to the reader, who has already read almost the whole first, introductory chapter, “So here you are now, ready to attack the first lines of the first page.”
>The second chapter has the same title as that of the book as a whole—If on a winter’s night a traveler—and it actually does describe a winter’s night and a traveler....We start with a train station, with steam from a locomotive clouding things over.
...
...
...
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>Chapter Twelve is a Coda chapter. Here it is in its entirety.
>“Now you are man and wife, Reader and Reader. A great double bed receives your parallel readings. Ludmilla closes her book, turns off her light, puts her head back against the pillow, and says, ‘Turn off your light, too. Aren’t you tired of reading?’ And you say, ‘Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.’”

>So ends the anti-novel than may be the greatest twentieth century book ever written on the theme of readers and reading of fiction.

I'm struggling to understand this book. It's just a collection of short stories without endings, tied together through a series of vignettes? Are the Cimmerians mentioned throughout supposed to be the irl ancient Cimmerians or has Calvino just applied the name to a fictional race of people? Everything about it feels like an inside joke.

Thread on Italo Calvino's work: what's your favorite? Why? What's overrated/underrated?

If on a winter's night a traveler, Invisible Cities, and the Cosmicomics stories are the greats for me. The sheer breadth of imagination, the playfulness with form without ever getting too arch and always retaining emotional impact... I think Cosmicomics might win for me though.

>>21903350

Literally you and me