If On A Winter's Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino

The front cover of Vintage Classics' If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is the letters of the words arranged somewhat haphazardly onto shelves, just as you would display your books. You smile to yourself. And then you flip it over to read the back cover, and this startling, somewhat puzzling group of sentences stares back at you. It's almost impossible to contain the curiosity now, so you hurry past the index, the acknowledgment, over to the page titled '1', and read 

"You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel..."

The wild ride that is reading this book starts there, and only gets wilder. Spread out over a meagre 200-something pages are a dozen or so stories, all part of the same plot, twisting and turning until there's no beginning or end to be found: none of these stories seem to have made it to their endings. It's almost like driving around town in a fancy car and suddenly being asked to get off , just when you were starting to enjoy yourself! What I inferred as my curiosity in the initial few chapters soon segued into dumbfoundedness and frustration. I would start acquainting myself with the characters, building mental pictures of what they would look like, only to turn the page after a cliffhanger and find... the next chapter with a completely different set of people and a new storyline! I couldn't help but wonder if the author really wanted to make it a challenge for the reader!

But in the end, patience never does disappoint. In the most inexplicable, creative way, Calvino drives his point across. The point being, I think, just how rewarding the experience of reading really is. Our primal inclination to chase book after book, story after story, for the rush, the excitement is real and universal and magnificent. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is essentially a treatise on the joys of reading, and in extension, of writing. It is evocative of palpable, throbbing anticipation in every page.

A lot of the book also talks about the creative process of a writer; of the expectations, worries, hopes, lamentations, and surprises along the way. I have always thought of writing as a semi-solitary experience, in that it naturally follows that we write with some regard to our readership. That in our honesty as writers, we don't forget to try to connect with our readers. This book is looking into a writer's mind with a magnifying glass and observing just how extreme this process can be. It shows  that end of the spectrum of writers for whom writing the perfect book for the ideal reader is not just a dream, but a mission. Calvino offers a striking parallel between the reader trying to enjoy a good book and the writer trying to write one. Thinking about it now, I can't help but wonder that this juxtaposition is a rather complex affair, but he lays it out on a bed of roses, adorns it with people and places and imagination. 

There is a sense of having come home, of belonging, that every reader, young or old, will encounter as they immerse themselves in this book. It's that all around the world there are people thinking similar thoughts and enjoying similar emotions as they read. Even though we read vastly different books, we are still drawn closer to each other simply by the joy we find in reading. 

"Reader, it is time for your tempest-tossed vessel to come to port."

Calvino's terrific novel about books and stories and writing and reading is truly one of a kind, and a perfect book to get you out of a reading slump; in uniquely having come full circle, it will remind you why you picked it up in the first place.