Spinning

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Plot

Oh how I wish I had formed a reading group just for this one book alone!

It struck me--maybe unreasonably, maybe just very late--that there is another underlying theme to the whole of this book.  Chapter 9, and we're back to 2nd person pov of you, the Reader, and having read much of the book Flannery handed you it is confiscated at the airport upon landing.  A nice woman whispers that she will provide you with a copy and does so, though of course it is not the same book.

It is a book you are seeing for the first time, and it does not look the least bit like a Japanese novel; it begins with a man riding across a mesa among the agaves, and he sees some predatory birds, called zopilotes, flying overhead.
"If the dust jacket's a fake," you remark, "the text is a fake too."
"What were you expecting?" Corinna says.  Once the process of falsification is set in motion, it won't stop.  We're in a country where everything that can be falsified has been falsified...(p. 212)

I think of the argument of there being only 37 different plots of story--some say it can be narrowed further down into 6.  So then, is Calvino making this point throughout the book, and more emphatically here for those of us too slow to have caught on yet?

It would seem that the phrase "everything that can be falsified has been falsified" is open to the interpretation of all truth told has been told, and can only be told in new and creative ways.  Fiction, as we know, is false truth.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Relating & Sex as Space

I laughed aloud at this one, where I feel Calvino has surely stuck this particular reader into his book as well:

At all these reflections of mine, Mr. Okeda remained silent, as he does always when I happen to talk too much and am unable finally to extricate myself from my tangled reasoning. (p. 203)

And oh yes, the ginkgo leaf falling through space and all that; well it all comes down to sex:

Though tormented by these circumstances, I managed to concentrate and subdivide the generic sensation of my sex pressed by the sex of Madame Miyagi into the compartmented sensations of the individual points of me and her, progressively subjected to pressure by my sliding movements and her convulsive contractions (p. 209)

And somehow, with a final though back to the ginko leaf analogy, the narrator has managed to both combine and separate individual sensations into the whole.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Hypertext and Multimedia

A nice analogy to hypertext:

I said I would like to distinguish the sensation of each single ginkgo leaf from the sensation of all the others, but I was wondering if it would be possible. (...) If from the ginkgo tree a single little yellow leaf falls and rests on the lawn, the sensation felt in looking at is is that of a single yellow leaf.  If two leaves descend from the tree, the eye follows the twirling of the two leaves as they move closer, then separate in the air, like two butterflies chasing each other, then glide finally to the grass, one here, one there. (p. 199)

And this:

Passing again beneath the gingko, I said to Mr. Okeda that in the contemplation of the shower of leaves the fundamental thing was not so much the perception of each of the leaves as of the distance between one leaf and another, the empty air that separated them. (p. 202)

These passages are from the section On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon. Maybe I've become hypertextual to a degree of heightened sensitivity in creating and separating life and all I read into a different meaning of spaces, but this image certainly calls to my mind the individual writing spaces of hypertext software such as Storyspace, and presents to me the map of separation within the whole.

Then this, on adding sound and visuals to text:

(...) I tried to make the comparison with the reading of a novel in which a very calm narrative pace, all on the same subdued note, serves to enforce some subtle and precise sensations to which the writer wishes to call the reader's attention; but in the case of the novel you must consider that in the succession of sentences only one sensation can pass at a time, whether it be individual or general, whereas the breadth of the visual field and the auditory field allows the simultaneous recording of a much richer and more complex whole. (p. 203)

Sure sounds like "Lights! Camera! Action!" to me. Yet I find it odd that in all the time I've studied hypertext--though it not be all that much I suppose--I have not heard Calvino mentioned along with other pioneers of new media. 

Then again, it could just be me as I crawl out of a literary rut and myopically gaze about.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Tying the Threads in a Twist

This chapter has been absolutely delightful in its revelations.  Having broken the pattern of second person (Reader) as narrator pov, it has switched to first person and that in the character of Silas Flannery, author of portions (perhaps) of this mysterious novel.  And who comes to see him, after Lotaria and Ludmilla, and after his connection with the translator Ermes Marana, but the Reader!  Appearing in this chapter (8) in the third person via the first! 

Bad enough that Flannery sends the seekers of alien life after him, but the novel he brings to show Flannery is stolen by them.  What does this mean?  But it gets even better, and here is likely a spoiler of sorts:

I have had the idea of writing a novel composed only of beginnings of novels.  The protagonist could be a Reader who is continually interrupted.  The Reader buys the new novel A by the author Z.  But it is a defective copy...(p. 197)

How glorious!

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - On Speedreading & Authorly Writing

Evidently Lotaria has a very different view towards reading for context:

She explained to me that a suitably programmed computer can read a novel in a few minutes and record the list of all the words contained in the text, in order of frequency.  "That way I can have an already completed reading at hand," Lotaria says, "with an incalculable saving of time.  What is the reading of a text, in fact, except the recording of certain thematic recurrences, certain insistences of forms and meanings?  (p. 186)

Well there ya go.  All that I've taken the time to dig out by myself is doable by a computer in "a few minutes."  Her theory may have some value:

"Words that appear eighteen times:  boys, cap, come, dead, eat, enough, evening, French, go, handsome, new, passes, period, potatoes, those, until...

"Don't you already have a clear idea what it's about?"  Lotario says.  "There's no question:  it's a war novel, all action, brisk writing, with a certain underlying violence.

Silas Flannery doesn't know quite how to take this revelation.  To be sure, he's feeling a bit down already as a writer and Calvino sics this woman on him.  Then her sister, Ludmilla pays the author a visit:

"My novels give you the idea of an ordinary person?"

"No, you see...The novels of Silas Flannery are something so well characterized...it seems they were already there before, before you wrote them, in all their details...It's as if they passed through you, using you because you know how to write, since, after all, there has to be somebody to write them..."

I feel a stab of pain.  For this girl I am nothing but an impersonal graphic energy, ready to shift from the unexpressed into writing an imaginary world that exists independently of me. (p. 190)

What better way to express the idea of story writing itself?  What better manner to show that the author is independent of the writing, no matter what amount of agony of emotion and effort go into the work?  I love the little stories that Calvino presents to display the qualities of good writing--and good reading for that matter. 

This is truly a book about and for writers at all stages of their journey.

LITERATURE:If on a winter's night... - The Changing Writer

Coincidence seems to happen more often as you get older, or maybe you are just more aware.  One of yesterday's posts in Hypercompendia notes the change in writing style an author may undergo that makes 'old' writing nearly unrecognizable as one's own. 

This morning's reading of Calvino brings me this, from Silas Flannery's diary:

Though I leave the house as little as possible, I have the impression that someone is disturbing my papers.  More than once I have discovered that some pages were missing from my manuscripts.  A few days afterward I would find the pages in their place again.  But often I no longer recognize my manuscripts, as if I had forgotten what I had written, or as if overnight I were so changed that I no longer recognized myself in the self of yesterday. (p. 186)

The concept--whether this is the intention of Calvino in bringing out or not--is the influence of experience from reading, writing, and just observing and living life that changes a writer's style.  The more he partakes, the greater the change.

In the next section, I see all hell breaking loose as Lotaria brings in the idea of electronic reading.

REALITY?: Things that boil my blood

Lord knows, I've had my own problems with lawyers and there are some outstanding ones out there, but this is just what makes them look so bad:

Insurance Agent Accused Of Stealing Nest Eggs

WATERBURY, Conn. -- A Waterbury couple claims that their insurance agent and financial advisor stole their life savings.Michael and Elizabeth Santopietro said that they trusted Tom Cipriano to help them invest their funds, but said that he took the money and spent it.

The I-Team received a call from Cipriano's attorney, Alfred Morroco. Morrocco insisted that his client is "working hard to pay the Santopietros back. He has no intention of not paying."

Cipriano's attorney blamed the financial problems on the senior citizens who lost their investments. He said the high-interest rates they were promised suggest they were loan-sharking Cipriano.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Reading Calvino to understand Barthes

Readerly/Writerly, Shmeaderly/Shmiterly.  Had Barthes proposed his theories in Calvino-speak, I would have embraced them more readily. My resistance was not completely due to my stubborn streak but as much, I would think, to his manner of presenting them.

Here's Calvino:

I am sure this Lotaria (that is her name) has read them only to find in them what she was already convinced of before reading them.
I tried to say this to her.  She retorted, a bit irritated: "Why? Would ou want me to read in your books only what you're convinced of?"
I answered her: "That isn't it. I expect readers to read in my books something I didn't know, but I can expect it only from those who expect to read something they didn't know."
(Luckily I can watch with my spyglass that other woman reading and convince myself that not all readers are like this Lotaria.)
"What you want would be a passive way of reading, escapist and regressive," Lotaria said. "That's how my sister reads.  It was watching her devour the novels of Silas Flannery one after the other without considering any problems that gave me the idea of using those books as the subject of my thesis."  (p. 185)

And yet Flannery (whose thoughts are those above) pronounces Ludmilla--not Lotaria--to be the ideal reader.  Ludmilla does not wish to know the author, she does not want to change her image of an author by compare/contrast methods of a meeting or further research.  Or so Lotaria claims.

I think the best statement here is this:  "I expect readers to read in my books something I didn't know, but I can expect it only from those who expect to read something they didn't know."  It suggests the reader input--something an author cannot possibly be aware of--based on their experience, as well as their seeking a new experience from the reading. 

Put even more simply:  The reader giveth and the reader taketh away. 

LITERATURE: Yay!

From the Guardian:

Magic triumphs over realism for Garcia Márquez

Two years after telling the world he was finished with writing, Gabriel Garcia Márquez has rediscovered his muse. The Nobel prizewinner is giving the final touches to "a novel of love", according to a friend.

REALITY?: The Bachelor

So Matt made the right choice and asked Shane to marry him.  I know this whole thing is wacko, but I'm crying anyway.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Writing to expectations

In Chapter 8 we get a closer look at the supposed author of the book(s) that our Readers seek, and that is Silas Flannery. He is a mysterious figure, and one of the most intriguing as Calvino uses him to speak directly to the writer/reader of his book.

Previously, we'd learned that Flannery was going through a slow production time in his writing, and he found himself watching a young woman through a spyglass as she read, hoping that she was indeed reading his own work.  This chapter takes it further and poses some amazing trails (there's that damned hypertext again!):

Idea for a story.  Two writers, living in two chalets on opposite slopes of the valley, observe each other alternately.  One of them is accustomed to write in the morning, the other in the afternoon.  Mornings and afternoons, the writer who is not writing trains his spyglass on the one who is writing.

One of the two is a productive writer, the other a tormented writer.  The tormented writer watches the productive writer filling pages with uniform lines, the manuscript growing in a pile of neat pages.  In a little while, the book will be finished: certainly a best seller--the tormenter writer thinks with a certain contempt but also with envy.  He considers the productive writer no more than a clever craftsman, capable of turning our machine-made novels, catering to the taste of the public; but he cannot repress a strong feeling of envy for that man who expresses himself with such methodical self-confidence.  It is not only envy, it is also admiration, yes, sincere admiration; ...(p. 172)

Shades of Danielle Steel and J.K. Rowling!  It is the author's traditional angst; that there be a dividing line between writing for the public or writing for oneself.  And why does the damn public have such shallow expectations anyway?

And here's the flip side:

The productive writer watches the tormented writer as the latter sits down at his desk, chews his fingernails, scratches himself, tears a page to bits, gets up and goes into the kitchen to fix himself some coffee, then some tea, then camomile, then reads a poem by Holderlin (while it is clear that Holderlin has absolutely nothing to do with what he is writing), copies a page already written and then crosses it all out line by line, (...)

(...) The productive writer has never liked the works of the tormented writer; reading them, he always feels as if he is on the verge of grasping the decisive point, but then it eludes him and he is left with a sensation of uneasiness.  But now that he is watching him write, he feels this man is struggling with something obsure, a tangle, a road to be dug leading no one knows where; at times he seems to see the other man walking on a tightrope stretched over the voice, and he is overcome with admiration.  Not only admiration, also envy; because he feels how limited his own work is, how superficial compared with what the tormented writer is seeking.  (p. 173)

Don't you just love it? And Calvino doesn't leave it there, with the self-doubt of every author in his own way, but he continues along this path as each author spies upon the young woman reading, each imagining giving her his own manuscript, and Holy Hypertext, Batman! -- the implications and possibilities of her reaction.

Calvino intrudes too upon the mind of the reader, the simple enjoyment of reading unfettered by the demands of writing.

This is a long chapter, but one where pieces are fitting together in the story of the two readers and the odd book(s) they seek to read.

REALITY?: Big Brother vs. God

Okay, so I guess we as a society have changed the overwhelming belief in God to transfer our faith, hope, ethical responsibility, and setting up of moral code to government instead.

Even as the wheels grind out so-called 'justice' which camouflages a liberal inner guilt that rather than rationalizing is instead deflected by the needless spewing out of lawmaking, Hollywood is busy Photoshopping out the offending scenes in Clint Eastwood's Hang 'em High. Maybe it's a generation thing, but show me a noose and it'll bring up thoughts of cattle rustlers and horse thieves.  Ah, the good old days of society's impact on the cowboy.  But then again, lynching down south and lynching in the west was going on about the same time, and the majority of it all was over a century ago.  Even I am not that old.

What I propose is this: That along with our tax bill we get a form to check as to the apportionment of a portion (since nobody would check the box for congressional salary increases) of our individual tax dollars towards spending.  As an opposer of capital punishment, I would sooner keep my dollar a day maintaining some murderer rotting away in a prison cell than putting it towards the tab of more useless legislation.

REALITY?: Big Brother

Connecticut moves one step closer to a Big Brother state, making individual rights and reason a responsibility of government overseers.

Don't like the way someone looks at you?  Make a stink about it and they'll make it a crime and write up a law against it. 

Personally, I'm all for the right to walk away from somebody if they are being offensive.  I'd even go so far as to say you'd be within your rights to punch them in the nose if they are persistent.  But then, that's illegal...unless of course it's got the government stamp of approval in the sport of boxing where folks beat up on each other for no good reason other than a gold belt buckle and some money.

REALITY?: Happy Mother's Day

I do wish you all a day of grace and gratitude and love for all the children of the earth.

Man Regrets Not Killing Daughter At Birth

It is difficult to say where we draw the line on imposing our beliefs on another culture. This is one of the ethical questions that plagues me; is it wrong for this father, in his firm belief (both religious and traditional) that his killing of his daughter in the name of honor is justifiable? In his own country and culture, it is. Do we then force our beliefs upon a country? One who believes that we are the evil force because we allow such dishonorable events to occur?

Man Regrets Not Killing Daughter At Birth: "

Another person driven insane by religion: 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'.

Two weeks ago, The Observer revealed how 17-year-old student Rand Abdel-Qader was beaten to death by her father after becoming infatuated with a British soldier in Basra. In this remarkable interview, Abdel-Qader Ali explains why he is unrepentant - and how police backed his actions.

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said...

'I have only two boys from now on. That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,' he said, his voice swelling with pride.

Comments | Posted in General"

(Via The J-Walk Blog.)

NEW MEDIA: The Down Side of Technology - Stupidity

I thought it was bad enough years ago when I Googled "lump in breast" and was greeted with websites full of bare breasts and tongues. 

This, somehow, is even sadder: Google "(surname) motorcycle accident":

Save On Motorcycle Accidents. Great Deals On Motorcycle Accidents!
Sponsored by: www.Motorcycle-Accidents.Pages.us.com  [Found on Ads by Ask.com

Accidents
Looking for Accidents? Find it Now
Sponsored by: www.consumeronly.com  [Found on Ads by Ask.com]

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Reader Input?

In this section, In a network of lines that intersect, I get the feeling that there is a hint of what a reader 'writes' into the story he is reading.  Since both readers have this particular book--going by the cover alone--the reader picks up this copy which is the Other Reader's, and finds that the last word in the title is different from his copy: enlace versus intersect. Would that not possibly indicate that the two readers may read the same book differently?  Maybe not, but it's a thought.

This story is different entirely (or, it's the same!) and is about a man whose wealth and power has come from cunning and maneuvering.  He wishes therefore, to avoid the many enemies he has made and has devised a method of evading detection by multiplying the images of himself, his car, his mistress, his company sites; all but his wife. His ideal would be to use mirrors to reflect so many of his images--like a kaleidoscope.  Ultimately, this proves his undoing.

While there is an obvious metaphor in the refractions and intersections of lines and forms in the arrangement of mirrors, I can truly understand it only in its stated context of story, or else when relating to writing and literature, only to the hypertext value of it.

As in a kaleidoscope, the hypothesis I would like to record in these lines break up and diverge, just as before my eyes the map of the city became segmented when I dismantled it piece by piece to locate the crossroads where, according to my informers, the trap would be set for me, and to establish the point at which I would get ahead of my enemies so as to upset their plan in my own favor.  (p. 167)

Calvino may just be simulating narrative structure through plot points, but the simultaneity of the paths as described above would indicate a grid and design assembled atop it.  Roads; links.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Sex as Hypertext

(I'm duplicating this particular section in Hypercompendia as it truly relates to hypertext)

We are in the center of a discussion regarding the Reader and the Other Reader and their eventual intimacy, thus bringing them together just as has the reading of a novel.  Calvino here notes the differences in reading and the act of sex, and yet in the hypertext format, the difference is nearly eliminated.  In fact, this passage brings to mind Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl.

Lovers' reading of each other's bodies (of that concentrate of mind and body which lovers use to go to bed together) differs from the reading of written pages in that it is not linear.  It starts at any point, skips, repeats itself, goes awkward, insists, ramifies in simultaneous divergent messages, converges again, has moments of irritation, turns the page, finds its place, gets lost.  A direction can be recognized in it, a route to an end, since it tends toward a climax, and with this end in view it arranges rhythmic phases, metrical scnasions, recurrence of motives.  But is the climax really the end? Or is the race toward that end opposed by another drive which works in the opposite direction, swimming against the moments, recovering time?  (p. 156)

In Hypertext, there is a 'whole' of narrative that is made up of bits of data or information that may or may not be necessary to the full understanding or enjoyment of the story.  Similar to the familiar 'maybe she liked that but I sure as hell don't' with learning of what turns a particular person on sexually. A tweak that doesn't work may be a metaphor that grants insight that only few will find meaningful. 

As an aside, I love the way Calvino uses language that suits what he is saying, i.e., "rhythmic phases."

I found this particularly interesting: "But is the climax really the end?"

What better said description of the first reading of a hypertext piece?  I know I always find myself wondering what I've missed, what wrong turns I've made (we're talking about hypertext here!) and if I have come out of the story with the same sense of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) had I taken an alternate route.  Am I judging what I've held as the meaning of the story with knowledge of all data necessary to come up with an honestly based conclusion?

The neat part of hypertext then, is that like sex, you want to go back and do it again.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Sex as White Space

Still in the setting of the sexual comparison/contrast to the literary:

If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional model, perhaps four-dimensional, or rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable.  What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space. (p. 156)

That gap in time, that near-loss of awareness except for the focus on pleasure--in the sexual act--or in the missing stages of story that bring one to a new point that is recognizable yet obvious in that it is not contiguous with what has just been read.

Sex as white space.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - The Reader

In this portion of Chapter 7, Calvino turns to address the 2nd Person POV to both Readers at one time, since they have 'become one' in bed.  Even while he likens the sexual act to reading as in reading bodies, he teaches still.

Calvino on close reading:

And you, too, O Reader, are meanwhile an object of reading: the Other Reader now is reviewing your body as if skimming the index, and at some moments she consults it as if griped by sudden and specific curiosities, then she lingers, questioning it and waiting till a silent answer reaches her, as if every partial inspection interested her only in the light of a wider spatial reconnaissance. (p. 155)

This addresses for me the layers of literature, the meanings that can be found by the individual reader and not necessarily intended or at the least, the particular intent of the author.  Calvino goes nearer the heart of individual reading here:

Meanwhile, in the satisfaction you receive from her way of reading you, from the textual quotations of your physical objectivity, you begin to harbor a doubt: that she is not reading you, single and whole as you are, but using you, using fragments of you detached from the context to construct for herself a ghostly partner, known to her alone, in the penumbra of her semiconsciousness, and what she is deciphering is this apocryphal visitor, not you. (p. 156)

This touches upon Barthes' death of the author.  What the reader does is pick and choose among the full display of phrases, ideas, prose that has been carefully chosen and toiled over by the author, to instead not only bring to it new meaning, but also take from the reading only those selections to inhabit a space that is separate from the piece of work, but a portion of a whole (or ghostly partner) created by the reader.

Too, while the concept of reading 'someone' (mind, body, etc.) is not by any means new, here we have the specific thought of portions, pieces, experience that are both put into and taken out of what we read.

Once again, wow.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Beginnings and Hypertext

Just when I get the old Marquez/McCarthy feeling that I needn't ever write another word Calvino jumps up and verifies my thoughts:

But how to establish the exact moment in which a story begins? Everything has already begun before, the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. (p. 153)

Even in the present tense, a word read is in the past. "I see" becomes "I saw" simultaneously with the reading--no, with the writing.  All written then, puts a different meaning to the term "flash fiction."  Calvino goes on:

Or else the real story is the one that begins ten or a hundred pages further on, and everything that precedes it is only prologue. 

So here he is referring to the narrative structure and noting that, even linear, it's beginning point may be unknown because it has indeed occurred, but is not necessarily written down; nor can it ever be.

The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest--for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both--must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.

While Calvino is focusing on the characters of a story (a main plot being the meeting and changing of the two), he may also be including the past of the reader, since I, we, whoever, is reading this particular book is so involved as to be a character himself.

Calvino, in this last paragraph above, also appears to expand on the notion of "after" as strongly as "before."  Prime hypertext manner of thinking.  The story need not end, it need not start here or here or there, and endings are continually changing.

BLOGGING: Fair Use

I believe that if I could conceive of Hell and choose its residential population, it would be only home to spammers.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Showing/Telling

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.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Wow. Switching within POV

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.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Hypertext

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.

REALITY & WRITING: What is?

Very interesting conversations via podcast on Steve Ersinghaus' blog regarding perspective and perception and past and present.

Can't remember (and of course, can't find now) where I've run up against the principles just recently, whether in reading or in the classroom setting, but both the notion of something being what it is precisely because of what it was (memory attachment of sorts) which of course is invisible to the present holder of the experience; and the notion of seeing something from just one angle (shades of Flatland) so as to be blind again from the vision of a different viewpoint are fascinating concepts.

Good stuff.

REALITY?: Dexter

Not feeling real good about this new CBS show. I've watched it several times, twice tonight for the back to back season finale.  It's about a serial killer who only killed other killers, had a horrendous experience at age three, and now helps the police get other serial killers.  He, however, still kills killers.  He just killed his brother, another serial killer. 

He also has a girlfriend who has a problem with her ex junkie, ex husband, and Dexter solves that problem temporarily by knocking the guy out, loading him with coke, thereby landing him back in jail.

Dexter is All-American cleancut, hailed by the NY Times as the best new TV drama. It's well put together and as action-packed and gory as any CSI or Law and Order show.

I happen to love the dark side of the human mind, and evidently I'm not alone here.  But personally, I don't like evil glamorized and made to seem justifiable and normal.  There are enough crazies out there in real life that are considered normal.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - The Inevitable

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.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Reader Input

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?

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Literary Critique?

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.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Joy of Writing

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.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Kinky

No, not because of the threesome in the story prior to this, Chapter 5, but rather that the thought occurred to me that if this novel were to be held to sexual standards, that's where it'd likely settle most comfortably, in the realm of kinky.

It goes beyond the point of view to bring such innovation into the first and second person that includes the reader in its intricate web of intrigue.  The last book that I read that touched on the idea of so intimate an access to a novel being written was Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds. Calvino brings everybody into the novel to stand there alongside you; here, a history of writers:

"What does the name of an author on the jacket matter? Let us move forward in thought to three thousand years from now.  Who knows which books from our period will be saved, and who knows which authors' names will be remembered?  Some books will remain famous but will be considered anonymous works, as for us the epic of Gilgamesh; other authors' names will still be well known, but none of their works will survive, as was the case with Socrates; or perhaps all the surviving books will be attributed to a single, mysterious author, like Homer."  (p. 101)

This, (the above) was the response from the translator who put the impossibly mixed up versions of several novels into being.

There is such a free flow of time travel here, not only because of the different stories that the main story readers are pursuing, but in bringing in the reader of this whole work itself.  It plays with and off and against all the rules of narrative.  It does not accept that this goes here and that should follow, but rather tests and explores as one would go beyond missionary position.

I will want to read more of Calvino's work, but I can already say, halfway through this novel, that it's one of my favorite books.

NEW MEDIA: Amazon's Kindle

Just took another look at the Kindle reader and I suppose that if I had a lot of extra money, I might go for it.  But then again, my naturally frugal nature would still likely balk at the economics of it.

At $400 for the unit, and $10 per book (for most fiction) versus about $12 per book for paperbacks, that's a $2 difference per book so that means I'd have to read 200 books before it became cost effective.  Let's cut that in half, seeing that some books may cost more and shipping charges might apply.  But even 100 books is quite a bit.

But that's not what stops me.  Nor is the fact that I'm limited to what Amazon chooses to make available in its offering not only of literature, but of what news magazines and specific blogs they'll grant me free updated access to read.  This part doesn't matter because let's keep to the specifics and not compare apples to oranges.  After all, no paperback offers this either.

But if the Kindle were a bit cheaper, AND if the books which after all you can not stack back on the shelf later (I wonder if you could store them on a hard drive--have to check again), then it's like leasing a car.  The payments are the same, but there's no physical car left at the end of the term.

I like the travel light idea and having several books available at the same time, but it's still too much money to lay out for what it offers.  At least I think so--though I would like to see one for myself.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Is it Calvino or me?

Chapter 5--the numbered chapters being the story of the 2nd person narrator who along with the Other Reader (Ludmilla) each purchased the book "If on a winter's night a traveler" only to find that it is a series of unrelated story beginnings (which are here, in the REAL Calvino book, as every other section).  I had just noted that two of the "stories" out of the four were unrelated, though two others were related--if only to each other.  Yet here, in Chapter 5, I read this:

Seated at a cafe table, you sum up the situation, you and Ludmilla.  "To recapitulate: Without fear of wind or vertigo is not Leaning from the steep slope, which, in turn, is not Outside the town of Malbork, which is quite different from If on a winter's night a traveler.  The only thing we can do is go to the source of all this confusion."  (p. 91)

But that's not true!  The second story, Outside the town of Malbork, has the first person narrator about to leave his home in Kudgiwa to exchange places with another young man and with any luck, he will also find out more about a girl whose picture the young man carries, a lady by the name of Zwida Ozkart.  There is also mention of Mr. Kauderer, and of his estate at Petkwo.

In the third story, Leaning from the steep slope, it appears that this same character is now at his destination, and he does meet up with Mr. Kauderer as well as the young Zwida.

So what gives?  Is it possible that Calvino has thrown a curve here, perhaps the introduction of an unreliable narrator in the chapters of the one path of story that admittedly continues unbroken?

Ludilla appears to agree, however.  So is it me?

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Patterns and Sex

In this next section of the bought book our narrator is reading, the story begins with new characters and setting. Titled "Without fear of wind or vertigo," it takes place in what seems to be a war zone of a country on the brink of revolution.  Therefore, we have intrigue and mystery; we also have some romance in the manner of menage a trois.

Calvino's strange way of talking about reading and writing the same story he is telling is losing its intrusive quality and it becomes more natural as I read along:

I am narrating this incident in all its details because--not immediately, but afterward--it was considered a premonition of everything that was to happen, and also because all these images of the period must cross the page like the army vehicles crossing the city (even if the words "army vehicles" evoke somewhat indefinite images; it's not bad for a certain indefiniteness to remain in the air, appropriate for the confusion of the period)...(p. 79)

It is not mere journal-form here, wherein the author may write with the understanding by the reader that the words are meant specifically as documentation, perhaps, or a diary of a certain time.  The words above supposedly are from a novel--albeit within another novel.  Calvino appears to do something, that is, use an element of style, and then proceed to explain and examine it.

 

On another point, Calvino does not shy away from sensuality in writing, but puts it in a most eloquent manner:

I tried to escape, insinuating myself with crawling movements toward the center of the spirals, where the lines slithered like serpents following the writing of Irina's limbs, supple and restless, in a slow dance where it is not the rhythm that counts but the knotting and loosening of serpentine lines.  There are two serpents whose heads Irina grasps with her hands, and they react to her grasp, intensifying their own aptitude for rectilinear penetration, which she was insisting, on the contrary, that the maximum of controlled power should correspond to a reptile pliability bending to overtake her in impossible contortions. (p. 89)

Given Calvino's simple setup for this scene, that the trio are inseparable, there can be no doubt as to the menage a trois taking place here, confirmed by the "two serpents whose heads Irina grasps..."  The plot point, however, is not to inject the reading with sex itself, but to emphasize both the relationship of the trio and to concentrate on the language used in describing the scene: rectilinear, serpentine.  Calvino is drawing lines here that the male characters are desperate to uphold and yet Irina is determined to maneuver into graceful curves.

NEW MEDIA: Choices

After twelve years (my, how time flies!) I have to change my home page.  Excite just gave me notice that they will no longer support stock portfolios on the home page.  Where to, then?  Maybe NetVibes since I have one sort of set-up already but I need to see if a stock column is doable.

LITERATURE: Library Additions

The Long House by William Gay
Provinces of Night by William Gay
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Jamestown by Matthew Sharpe
Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne
The Best American Non-Required Reading 2007

More to come.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Pattern

With the next section of the "corrected" novel our narrator is reading we have a break in pattern; precisely, by a connection with the previous story in the book.  The reason for feeling the novel was improperly printed was the entrance of completely different characters, and yet we find that these two chapters do continue a moving story.

Then we get to Chapter 4 of the book (we are holding physically) and we meet the Other Reader, Ludmilla, and her sister, Lotaria who seem to be at odds about most things, and in particular, the validity of the book in question.

Lots of stories going on here.  Lots of disconnected connections. Links?

REALITY: April 30th, 2002

The expected phone call comes unexpectedly, in the middle of working with a new customer named Sally.  The phone rings and I tell her that I'm very sorry but I have to leave.  My mother's name is Sally, I tell her, and the nursing home has called. I hold the tears and fears back with a mantra prayer as I wind my way southward through the state and notice changes in the spaces by the length of leaves and fallen blossoms.

She looks so tiny lying there.  And she's wearing someone else's nightgown though she wouldn't know it, but it bothers me somehow.  If today's the day then something of herself should be with her, what little has been left to her at all.

"Mom," I whisper, then a little louder, "Mom?  I'm here, it's me."  Me is anybody to my mother.  She never opens her eyes.  Even for the nurse who makes her sit up for a sip of cranberry juice.  He's so gentle with her.  She looks so frail and white against his bulk.  He is large and black and has one arm around her. She responds to him.  She doesn't know, I don't believe, who I am or if I'm even there.  "Thank you, Andre," I say to him.  It's meant for all he's done the last six weeks for her.  He knows.  "She's a sweet lady," he tells me, for comfort, and it is.

My sister comes, we hug and cry and sit and wait and go outside for just a moment through the waiting.  We decide we will not tell my dad.  She leaves, I wait.  I sing, I dance, I tell her jokes.  Then I ask for her forgiveness for anything and all I've done, and give her mine.  The nurse brings me some orange juice.  It cuts my throat with acid cold.  I wonder if maybe it isn't time at all.  But there is little time left and things I want to learn yet from her have been kept from me for years by this disease and all I've got is time to let her dream of other things. I tell my mother that she need not worry; that we'll take good care of Dad.  Then two quick breaths, just a tad faster, a little louder than the rest. I watch.  I squeeze her hand.  She doesn't take another.

I know and sit there for a minute quietly, still waiting for something I suppose.  And when it doesn't come, I call the nurse.  My mother's gone. Still, it's hard to leave her there but I must go to see my Dad.

REALITY?: video

Too danged cute not to share (put on sound):
The duck and the dog.wmv

REALITY?: The Starting Point of Harvest

As bottling time of some of last year's harvest wine begins, I see the beginnings of the new year's harvest.  This is the quince bush that can produce jelly or wine.

REALITY?: Rainy Day Discoveries

A day for reading, writing, paying monthly bills.  But this comes out of the blue: We have 56 chairs in this household.

I may well be one of the few who rented a tent for a baby shower but didn't need to rent chairs.  I once comfortably had a family sit-down dinner for 21 people (and obviously had many chairs left over).

19 Chairs are considered outdoor furniture
  5 Chairs are rockers
  6 Chairs are kitchen chairs
  2 Chairs are easychairs
  1 Chair is in the frameshop
  1 Chair is ergonomic (one of those dumb kneel-on things)
  2 Chairs are computer office chairs
  4 Chairs are antiques
  2 Chairs are desk/sewing machine chairs
  3 Chairs are to be recovered someday
  8 Chairs are folding chairs
  3 Chairs are sit-down-and-take-off-your-shoes chairs

Knowing this, having taken mental inventory and established this as fact, I can now move on to something else.

LITERATURE: Touchpad Tricks

Well, since learning the touchpad versus the mouse on the Mac, I've found that the same thing happens when I get the itch and visit amazon.com and look over my wish list.  I tap rather than click, but the result is the same:  a batch of new books due in next week. 

But here's the rationale: "Hit 'em where it hurts" Connecticut legislators are about to put into effect yet another heavy tax on its residents, and that's a delivery tax.  This on top of their heavy gasoline tax which has already upped the prices on shipping.

I'll let you all know what I got when I get 'em. 

REALITY?: Peter, Paul, and Mary

I think I've several posts over the year just like this one.  Peter, Paul and Mary on PBS.  Of course I watch until they get to the inevitable point: Puff the Magic Dragon.  Someday I'll learn to flip the channel at the first notes.

Instead of sitting here crying like an idiot.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Purpose?

This is a book, most of all, about reading I believe; and for the writer, a book about how a book is read should be of utmost value.  Know thine enemy.  Know your audience.

Back in reader mode of Chapter 3, we see another element of writing/reading as focus; that of reader experience brought to the reading which in effect changes what is read.Calvino also touches here on relevance and necessary grounding to make a reader interested in what is being read.

And he seems to mean "or Ludmilla?"  But he doesn't finish the sentence; and to be sincere you should answer that you can no longer distinguish your interest in the Cimmerian novel from your interest in the Other Reader of that novel. (p. 51)

While this simply defines your interest in the girl, the Other Reader, now given the name Ludmilla, as you explain your purpose in coming to meet a professor who is an expert on Cimmerian literature, it does to me reflect the notion of reality/fiction bonding in areas of similarity borne of experience.  Here it becomes a bit clearer:

Now, moreover, the professor's reactions at the name Ludmilla, coming after Irnerio's confidences, cast mysterious flashes of light, create about the Other Reader an apprehensive curiosity not unlike that which binds you to Zwida Ozkart, in the novel whose continuation you are hunting for, and also to Madame Marne in the novel you had begun to read the day before and have temporarily put aside, and here you are in pursuit of all these shadows together, those of the imagination and those of life. (p. 51)

LITERATURE: Well, neat!

I don't mind the heavy Google traffic here that leads to the literary reviews I've done; the short story The Swimmer had nearly single-handedly built Spinning up to what it is today. But it's especially nice when a teacher links me to her class assignment as a "literature weblog--very  helpful resource for this text."

The school is St. Francis de Sales; the text is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude which will always stand as one of my very favorite novels of all time.

It keeps ya goin'.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - Layers

I'd noticed this before but there's an instance here that illustrates how Calvino touches on so many areas within one fell swoop of his pen:

Every moment you discover there is a new character, you don't know how many people there are in this immense kitchen of ours, it's no use counting, there were always many of us, at Kudgiwa, always coming and going: the sum never works out properly because different names can belong to the same character, indicated according to the circumstances by baptismal name, nickname, surname or patronymic, and even by appellations such as "Jan's widow," or "the apprentice from the corn shop."  But what counts are the physical details that the novel underlines--Bronko's gnawed nails, the down on Brigd's cheeks--and also the gestures, the utensils that this person or that is handling--the meat pounder, the colander for the cress, the butter curler--so that each character already receives a first definition through this action or attribute; but then we wish to learn even more, as if the butter curler already determined the character and the fate of the person who is presented in the first chapter handling a butter curler, and as if you, Reader, were already prepared, each time that character is introduced again in the course of the novel, to cry, "Ah, that's the butter curler one!" thus obligating the author to attribute to him acts and events in keeping with that initial butter curler. (p. 35)

Wow.  This is just the cat's meow.  In this one paragraph we have so much to learn.

"Every moment you discover there is a new character,": This tells me that until you read further, you will not know, though you are sitting in the middle of this story, who else is in the room until the author writes it in.  A fascinating concept; simple, but true.

Calvino then goes on: "the sum never works out properly because different names can belong to the same character..."  Shades of Dostoevsky and every other annoying Russian writers who loves to confuse!  Is Calvino pointing out a writing ploy?

"But what counts are the physical details that the novel underlines--(...)and also the gestures, the utensils..."  I believe Calvino is doing several things here.  He is focusing the reader on this portion of the story, perhaps hinting that he go back and look for a 'butter-curler' or some such thing that shall prove to be important to the story.  He is also telling us that this is what he is doing; and in doing so, is bringing the author into the storyworld where he and you are the reality figures living in the same space as these fictional characters of the novel. 

And third, he's giving us a nice lesson in how to write: "Ah, that's the butter-curler one!" thus obligating the author to attribute to him acts and events in keeping with that initial butter-curler.

Good God,how did the man think of all this?

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - 2nd Person POV

Chapter 2 (!) brings us back into the reading mode of the book, that is, the narrator addressing us as 'you' and telling us how to go about returning Calvino's book because it appears to be a printer's error in how it's put together.

The bookseller maintains his composure. "Ah, you, too?  I've had several complaints already.  And only this morning I received a form letter from the publisher.  You see?  'In the distribution of the latest works on our list a part of the edition of the volume If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino has proved defective and must be withdrawn from circulation.' (p. 28)

Whereby the bookseller points to a young woman who has just returned the book.  This gives 'you' opportunity to meet her:

And so the Other Reader makes her happy entrance into your field of vision; or, rather, into the field of your attention; or, rather, you have entered a magnetic field from whose attraction you cannot escape. (p. 29)

And here's the sticky wicket with second person pov: it may not suit you as reader to become the 'you' of Calvino's (or anybody else's--I wrote a second person pov short story once that involved the reader's appraisal of 'her' own naked body) image of you as reader.

Obviously, this Other Reader holds a certain attraction to 'you' as more than a fellow literature enthusiast; 'you' think she's hot.  Huh?

Well just as Roland Barthes has taught me that reader changes story, story changes reader is often a more readily accepted fact of life.  So there should be no problem for me here.  I tend to think more like a man than a woman (stereotyping, I know, but there are biological differences and proof that cognitive forces are influenced by gender--and I'm not saying "smarter"; I'm saying "different") in many ways.  It's just that picking up a girl has never been one of them.

REALITY?: Why I Love My Man

Similar middle-class backgrounds and age group may sustain us through a merging into marriage of two Scorpios when one is in the 'up' mode, the other 'down'.  But eighteen years of wedlock also emphasize the differences and luckily we may upon occasion compromise without the necessary bend to breaking state of bliss.

Him: You know you should turn off the furnace for the day now that we don't need it for the heat and only for hot water...

Me: (with huge grin)  My  dad would be so proud of you.

Him:  I always liked your father.

Me: And if he were alive today and heard you, I'm sure he'd have liked you too.

In truth, I have an absolutely awesome black & white photo, taken by my niece for a college course, of my dad and Him with heads together over something that maybe now I'm emotionally ready to frame up and hang.

LITERATURE: If on a winter's night... - The Fourth Wall?

I know what the term means in the reality/fiction barrier between narrative and reader, and when it is breached to bring the reader into the story.  This Calvino does to a degree, not by inviting the reader completely into the environment, but by reaching out in what might be considered an "aside" in stage terms (I believe) to form a connection that passes information between narrator and reader in a much more intimate manner than a mere recollection of events.

The breaking of the barrier is done by the character within the story--but he usually does not go beyond the storyworld in invitation.  Calvino has his character disengage himself from the storyworld at least to have one foot in, one foot out and firmly planted by the reader's side as he is turning pages.  The character appears to read along with the reader. 

In this portion, the narrator admits that all he knows is in effect what we know: he is in a strange train station at night, is carrying baggage that he expects to exchange with someone who is supposed to meet him and utter a code sentence.  This is the stuff of intrigue and yet it is examined in a way that the reader normally needs to do all by himself.  The conflict then is there and building as we follow him in his worries of having missed his accomplice.  Calvino then neatly introduces the background flavor at the station bar, including a couple of the characters and the narrator's interaction, and voila! it all comes back to plot and story and he is met and hurried out of there aboard the next train out.

It was exciting in a way that overexplanation should have tainted it but didn't.  For all I knew, as reader, and confidante of the narrator, the person he was anxious to be meeting may well have been me!