"You're the sort of person who no longer expects anything of anything...from people, from journeys...You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached in your personal life...general matters, even international matters" (Calvino 4). This statement is the first illustration of the manipulation done by the author. How can a person, or the author in this case, tell you how to feel and what to conclude about the personal matters of your life? Does it not feel like the author is invading the personal privacy of your mind? Isn't the purpose of reading a book is to have your own imagination or interpretation of what your are reading? This manipulation that Calvino does throughout the book is what I dislike the most.
I was already told in class since Aura that this sort of manipulation will get worse by the time we get to If on a winter's night a traveler. I had no idea what to expect. I didn't know that it was going to be this bad to the point where it felt like I was being brainwashed to the point where I could not feel or think for myself about the book. What's even more annoying is that at some parts of the book Calvino interrupts my train of thought about the literature and slaps on a piece of "what you are suppose to feel now" section in the text, "You have not read about thirty pages and you're becoming caught up in the story...You are the sort of reader who is sensitive...just when you were beginning to grow truly interested...the author feels [to] call upon you to display one of those virtuoso tricks" (Calvino 25). Calvino just jumps in and tells you how many pages you have read and what sort of reader you are and exactly what you are feeling but he tells you what he is doing that is bothersome to me, as a reader. It is true that I do grow interested at the peak of the story and Calvino just ruins it by puting in a manipulation piece or just starts a new story. Clavino states from the first story of the train, " They've killed Jan. Clear out...Go to track six. Opposite the freight station. You have three minutes...Move, or I'll have to arrest you...The express arrives at top speed. It slows down...[and]pulls out again." And that's where the story ends. How can Calvino just leave you hanging and knowing that because you are awaiting for the fall of the climax just ramble on about the physical book itself (page number, words, and signatures). "The mistake occurred as they were binding the volume...each signature is a large sheet on which sixteen pages are printed" (Calvino 25). This sort of jumping around from text, the author's point of view, to cutting the story short and starting a new story is all confusing and gives me a headache.
By the time I got to the second story I let the the author's manipulation take over and I decided to to go with the book's flow instead of fighting it. At least by following the flow of the novel, reading the book would not be such a hassle. In the second story Calvino stated, "Today I saw a hand thrust out of a window of the prison, toward the sea...the hand seemed white and slender to me, a hand not unlike my own...nothing expect[ed] in a convict" (Calvino, 55). If I am not able to flow with Calvino's stories with my sense of correlation or flow it's best for me to incorporate my senses with his flow in order to comprehend Calvino's literature.
I see where you're coming from with this post, it's part of the reason why it's so hard for me to get into If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. The lead up to the climax is repeated over and over again, like a constant tease, and you just have to go with it or else the story will take off without you.
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