'if on a winter's night a traveler': embracing postmodernism, or hoisting it on its own thingamajig?

i will try to post someting "deep" tomorrow

I'm afraid I don't like this novel by Calvino, which I read 5 years ago. I suppose it has certain intricate ways of cleverness, but I seem to remember thinking it was too driven by sexuality.

But what I guess I mean in the thread title is that the book is metafiction, but it's metafiction about the perils of metafiction. It uses (then) trendy critical theory to puncture the critical theory itself. Or so it seemed to me.

In any case, I pulled out my copy of Oulipo Laboratory which has a little thing by Calvino called "How I Wrote One of My Books" containing little structuralist squares for each numbered chapter of the book. The first page of this has all the squares and it looks like a sideways pyramid, with the first and last chapters having one square each and the middle two chapters having six squares each. Maybe if I look hard enough I can find the one that corresponds to "when it seems like he's writing the story but at the same time he's writing about the experience of reading the story."

Marcovaldo is easily my favorite of his books. Harry Mathews has an essay about Calvino's funeral in which a whole class of schoolkids come, saddened over the loss of Marcovaldo's creator.

(Pinefox I am merely flirting with you insincerely, do not be alarmed.)

but... too driven by sexuality? i don't get that.

Invisible Cities, though, is magnificent.

No... There are a few fantasies of sex, and there is some sex within the story snippets scattered through the book (although there certainly isn't sex in all of them), but the Reader's pursuit of the Other Reader is routinely frustrated until the very end, when they're finally in bed together...reading. The book isn't about sex at all. It's about books.

Your previous mail is intriguing but truly ends in chuckles. Anyone who has seen how I treat my books will not think me their abuser.

(PS: Is cooking erotic because it = the pursuit of a finished meal? Is walking erotic cos it involves getting from A to B (= a desire)? I think what all these acts share is a certain teleology, a purposiveness; would that they were as erotic as all that.)

(And, yes, my initial post's ending was intended to be at least slightly amusing, if not actually funny.)

Food also takes long to prepare but is quick to devour.

If I wanted to write a book 'about books', such erotic entanglements would not be an obvious way of going about it.

seems like a comment quite far, far from the money, off in its own little impoverished land, dragging its fingers through the dry earth.

dude is right, that book was slammin'

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/021_02/13283

The sensational quality (and here I mean the sensations one feels when encountering a book by an author who killed herself upon its completion) of its content in relation to its seeming parallels with Qiu Miaojin’s life is an inextricable part of the reading. The book is an entirely postmodern act.

'Postmodern' clearly not doing much these days...doubt it could've been this calculated. But who knows with suicide..

Marcovaldo is easily my favorite of his books. Harry Mathews has an essay about Calvino's funeral in which a whole class of schoolkids come, saddened over the loss of Marcovaldo's creator.

I'd like to read this essay?

Marcovaldo is in my top 3 Calvino for sure. If... Traveller never was, but it was a long time ago that I read it, I was much younger; in fact it seems like a really good idea to read it again ASAP.

Someone upthread otm about how Calvino, of the ludic authors, never wants to mistake the ball for the game. That's why I love him the most.

When you understand what the pinefox was saying, that is an early warning sign.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 22 January 2005 09:06 (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I´m looking forward to read his letters book (now available in Penguin pocket as well). Both Vintage and Penguin have his work in print, but the contents and the titles of the books vary sometimes - very irritating sometimes. ´Six Memos for the Next Millenium´ is a great read for how he explains his working methods for constructing his stories.

Six Memos totally rules