Complete the Task

We’ve mentioned this before. All three of us are first-borns. It’s not like us to leave a task undone, certianly not one we saw to near completion.

Yet here sits this blog. Unupdated in over seven years.

And here sits the WEM Reading list. Twenty-seven of thirty-one titles have been crossed off. To be fair, we’ve all read, but not blogged, at least twenty-nine of them, but none of us has made it to the fiction finish line.

To add insult to injury SWB put out a new edition of WEM and added a 32nd book.

But we’re going to see this through. Not for you, although we’re glad you’re here reading this, but for us.

We need to finish.

We need stay connected through our love of reading. The trials, tribulations, and even joys of life are to be shared. Through engagement with the written word and discussion of life’s stories – both published and unpublished – we plan to do just that. This is the consolation of conversation that makes up good friendship.

When we started this project my twins looked like this. Today they are eleven.
Don’t worry, I’m not finished with them, either.

 

Tough

If on a winter’s night a traveler is tough.   Salman Rushdie said so.  In my search for some guidance about the book, I stumbled upon the website Shmoop.  The site’s tagline is “We speak student.”  Shmoop has character lists, quizes, and analysis–like many other sites.  What I had not seen before was a Tough-O-Meter: a calculator of literary difficulty.  Shmoop states:

We’ve got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you’ll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)

I loved it!  I was uncertain about its usefulness, but, boy was it entertaining.  I looked up several WEM novels and either gloated or dispaired about my literary “toughness”.

In case you were wondering, If on a winter’s night a traveler scores an eight.

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PS–Shmoop also has a steaminess rating.  Consider yourself warned; our next book, Song of Solomon, is rated R.

 

 

Life and Death Results

“Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end?  In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died.  The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.”

At our last wrap-up, Christina, Jeannette and I took the list WEM novels and placed the the titles we’ve read into two Calvino-inspired categories: Continuity of Life and Inevitablitly of Death.  I promised to share our results.

The Continuity of Life  Don Quixote Pilgrim’s Progress Pride and Prejudice Oliver Twist Jane Eyre The Scarlet Letter (Hester Prynne) Crime and Punishment The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The Red Badge of Courage Seize the Day One Hundred Years of Solitude If on a winter’s night a traveler **     ** experimental

The Inevitability of Death  Gulliver’s Travels * The Scarlet Letter (Arthur Dimsdale) Moby Dick Uncle Tom’s Cabin Madame Bovary Anna Karenina The Return of the Native The Portrait of a Lady Heart of Darkness The House of Mirth The Great Gatsby Mrs. Dalloway The Trial Native Son The Stranger 1984 Invisible Man   * satire

Do you agree?  Disagree?

We’re always up for a good debate.

 

Matters of Life and Death

Susan Wise Bauer shares that Calvino’s classic If on a winter’s night a traveler contains eleven beginnings. (WEM, pg. 110)

Looking at my copy’s table of contents, I count ten titled chapters.  So how many beginnings are there?  ten or  eleven?

Should I count chapter [1]?  That felt more like a prologue?  Should I count chapter [12]? In twelve I have the beginning of the Reader and Ludmilla’s life together.  That could be a beginning, but that same chapter has the conclusion of the story’s illusive novel.  Chapter [2]?  There the Reader goes to the book store and the story within a story (many stories) takes off.  Ten beginnings?  Eleven?  Beginnings are just one of the confusing things about this novel.

Salman Rushdie called If on a winter’s night a traveler, “the most complicated book you… will ever read.”

It was complications that drove Christina, Jeannette, and me to do a different kind of wrap-up.  Sure we met over food like always, but when it came time to discuss the wrap-up questions, we were stumped.  How do you talk about point of view, setting, style, or character obstacles?  There are stories within stories within stories!

Instead we latched on to this quote from the book:

  “Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end?  In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died.  The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.”

The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces:  the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.  All stories?  We decided to see about that.  With WEM novel list in hand, we thought back over three year’s worth of reading and divided the books we’ve read into two categories: continuity of life and inevitability of death.  True, some books ended with the hero and heroine married (Jane Eyre).  In some books, they died (Anna Karenina).  Sometimes they married and later died (Madame Bovary).  Amazingly, we instantly agreed on the placement of about 97% of the titles.  After brief debates, we were able to place the remaining 3%, giving us 100% agreement on our results.

Think back.  Where would you put Don Quixote?  The Scarlet Letter?  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?  1984?  Consider where you’d place each of the WEM novels we’ve read so far.  Start with Don Quixote and end with If on a winter’s night a traveler.

I’ll share the Classic Case of Madness results soon.  Put some thought into placing the novels.
Remember…tt’s a matter of life and death.

 

 

 

 

The End of the Beginnings

Beginning number 10

“What story down there awaits its end?”

If you could have any superpower, which one would you choose?  Invisibility?  Flight?  X-ray vision?

Oh, for the power to erase.
Cat fur off the dining room chairs.  Dirty dishes off the kitchen counter.

Ah, but would the power be used for good or for evil?

In Calvino’s beginning number ten the main character tidies up his surroundings.  With the jumbo pink eraser of his mind, he rubs out everything he does not wish to see: uniformed workers, hospitals, universities…  He erases until there’s nothing left but the surface of the earth and the wind which blows trash across the ground.  In the trash is a page from Calvino’s previous beginning “Around an empty grave”.  Although the main character eliminates everything and everyone, he would like to see his love interest Franziska.  When he finds her, she’s surrounded by Men from Section D that won’t be erased.  Franziska is clueless to the disappearing world around her.  The Men from Section D are completely aware, and they congratulate the main character on his clean sweep.  When eraser man wants to repair the damage he’s done, he’s unable to and a giant crack in the earth separates him from Franziska.  Is he able to leap to be with her?

There’s no surprise that this is where the beginning ends.  What do you think?  Is there a happy ending for eraser man and Franziska?  Or like One Hundred Years of Solitude, is this the end of the end?  Instead of swirling winds, the community is destroyed by the power of a character’s mind.  It would only be fitting in that it’s an author’s mind that creates/destroys a story.

[11]  Will a library save the Reader?

This quick answer is, “Nope.”
The Reader’s ten titles are all lost, or out for repairs, or checked out.  Not a single book is available.  While at the library, eight readers share their theories about reading.  Did you have a favorite?

Then there is the magical moment when the titles of the previous tales are linked together to make a sentence.  Jeannette wasn’t surprised; she’d already predicted this outcome, but I was.  I had to page back through the chapter headings to read for myself.

At this point, the Reader is weak with the disappointments of his previous reads.  The seventh library patron tells him…

“Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end?  In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died.  The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.”

[12] The Reader choses marriage over death.  Christina was reminded of Jane Eyre‘s epilogue:  “Reader, I married him.”  The brief three paragraph chapter ends with The Reader finishing If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.  Reaching the end of the beginnings, I scrawled question upon question:

Is this just a tale of tales?
Is it a joke?
Did the Reader find the complete story?
What?
What!

What was your reaction to Calvino’s experiment?

 

 

Number nine? You’re up.

“Around an empty grave”

If I could be a character in any of Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler“, the part of Nacho’s father would rank near the top of my list.  Score the part of the senior, and you get to give a dramatic death scene that includes the tragic moment where you finally are going to tell your son Nacho who his mother is, but then pass away before you can say her name

Playing the part of the mysterious stranger who follows Nacho would be pretty good too.  Riding my horse on the opposite side of the chasm, refusing to answer Nacho, and pointing my gun at him make for a dramatic scene.

Would it be more fun to play Anacleta Higueras or Doña Jazmina?

[10]

• Agreeing to completing a secret mission gets the Reader out of prison.

(“official mission with secret aspects as well as secret mission with official aspects”)

• Banned books and censorship are the focus of this chapter.
• Marana’s work was inspired by Ludmilla–or rather the desire to prove to her that there is nothing behind the text of a novel.  But Marana was unable to do this and was allowed to escape the country.
• The Reader would like to finish at least one tale and creates a plan to intercept the rest of “Around an empty grave” before Porphyrich can.
• The Reader meets Anatolin who gives him a few pages at a time, but before the Reader receives the complete novel, Anatolin is arrested.

Whew… Almost finished.

 

 

 

 

Eight is (not so) great

I can’t do it.  I can’t talk about beginning number eight: Calvino’s Japanese story.

We like to keep this blog PG as much as we can, but the amount of sex in “On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon” does not allow for that.  I will share that I marked one quote because it reminded me of Anna Karenina:

“…I made an unwise and involuntary movement of the mouth: I bared and clenched my teeth as if to bite.  Instinctively Makiko jumped back with an expression of sudden pain, as if she had really been given a bite at some sensitive spot.”

Remember Vronsky’s teeth?

The other thought I had was that the titled chapters of Calvino’s novel would make great names for jazz band pieces.  Don’t you agree?  “If on a winter’s night a traveler”, “Outside the town of Malbork”, “Leaning from the steep slope”— I can hear the brass section now.
Ooo  “Without fear of wind or vertigo” would have tons of percussion.  “Looks down in the gathering shadow” could be for a trio: piano, set, and upright bass.  If Modest Mussorgsky could write Pictures at an Exhibition based on Viktor Hartmann’s artwork , surely some jazz composer could do the same with Calvino’s classic.  The movement depicting “On the carpet of leaves…” may need to come with a parental advisory warning.

Chapter [9]
This chapter is a return to “cloak and dagger” with double agents and costume changes.  “On a carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon” is confiscated from the Reader.  Corinna (who looks like Lotaria, later turns out to be Gertrude, Ingrid, Alfonsina, Sheila, and Capt. Alexandra, but who really is Lortaria   ) gives him a replacement title that’s not a replacement because it’s a different story entirely.

“You have come all the way to Ataguitania to hunt a counterfeiter of novels, and you find yourself prisoner of a system in which every aspect of life is counterfeit, a fake.”

There’s imprisonment, censorship, and a reading machine: reminiscent of The Trial, 1984,  and Gulliver’s Travels.  In the end the book “has been crumbled, dissolved, can no longer be recomposed, like a sand dune blown away by the wind.”

Were you really surprised?

 

 

 

 

Lucky Seven

Will our Reader have literary luck in beginning number seven?

Nope.  He begins a book by Flannery but it’s a different title and different book.  Once again, the Reader thinks he knows what to expect but is fooled.  “In a network of lines that intersect” is about a successful kaleidoscope-collecting businessman who creates a cunning and complicated plan to avoid being kidnapped.  Meetings with false mistresses cover the meetings with his real mistress, Lorna, from his wife, Elfrida.  The decoy kidnappings do not protect the business man from being abducted.  By whom?

Chapter [8] from the diary of Silas Flannery

“How many years has it been since I could allow myself some disinterested reading?  How many years has it been since I could abandon myself to a book written by another, with no relation to what I must write myself?

Preach it Flannery.  I mean, Calvino.

“Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks or the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities.”

Could it be that Flannery, I mean, Calvino would disapprove of the WEM wrap-up questions?

Flannery has a lot going on in this diary of his:

• two authors that write the same novel
• a cameo by Snoopy
• lines from the opening of Crime and Punishment
• fake Flannerys in Japanese
• the Koran
• aliens
• electronically transcribed novels
• a visit from the Reader
• The book idea for “If on a winter’s night a traveler…”

Flannery’s words or Calvino’s?

“I have pondered my last conversation with that Reader.  Perhaps his reading is so intense that it consumes all the substance of the novel at the start, so nothing remains for the rest.  This happens to me in writing: for some time now, every novel I begin writing is exhausted shortly after the beginning, as if I had already said everything I have to say.”

 

 

 

 

 

For the sixth time

If on a winter’s night a traveler… beginning number six: “In a network of lines that enlace”.

In this beginning we have a slightly unstable professor who is obsessed with the telephone.  He runs for his health and his nerves.  The professor is compelled to answer the ringing telephone in a stranger’s home while he’s out jogging.  He learns of a crime that will be committed.  What will he do?

Did you read?  Do you know?

[7]  Setting: Ludmilla’s home
Point of View: Other Reader–Ludmilla  and Reader

After a perusal of Ludmilla’s home by the Reader, Irnerio enters, the man who makes art of books but doesn’t read.  It is revealed that Marana translates from a room at Ludmilla’s.  The Reader also learns that the Other Reader is an acquaintance of Silas Flannery’s.  While Ludmilla and the Reader are in bed the copy of “In a network of lines that enlace” disappears.  Irnerio is suspect.

Ludmilla is the perfect reader “always ready to follow [authors], in the fickle, carefree relations one can have with incorporeal persons.”   Marana wants to break that trust.

Up next?  Take seven.

 

 

 

 

Give Me Five

How’s your reading of Calvino’s classic coming?  Making your way through the maze?

 

If on a winter’s night a traveler: Beginning number five!  and it starts with a man trying to get rid of a dead body.  Native Son anyone?

In “Looks down in the gathering shadow” the main character Ruedi and his sidekick Bernadette are living their version of Weekend at Bernie’s.  When dead Jojo doesn’t fit nicely in a plastic bag, they put him in a convertible and ride around town.  Cops prevent them from dumping the stiff in the river.  An empty gas tank uses up all the fuel for the bonfire cremation they were planning.  They can’t seem to get rid of him.  Ruedi has a shady past that can’t be escaped.  His daughter performs a nightclub show with crocodiles.  He has been/will be blackmailed.  Finally they throw the dead body off the top floor terrace.  As the elevator doors open on the ground floor, Jojo’s mob sees their “boss’s” (father’s?) shoe in the bag and the chapter ends.

It is in Cavedagna’s office in Chapter [6] that I learn why The Trial irked me so much:

“…you are gripped by the fear of having also passed over to “the other side” and of having lost that privileged relationship with books which is peculiar to the reader: the ability fo consider what is written as something finished and definitive, to which there is nothing to be added, from which there is nothing to be removed.”

Cavedagna shares publisher intel (and letters) with the Reader.  It seems that stories are written by the Father of Stories who consumes hallucinatory mushrooms and weaves tales that authors record.  Wait.  That’s not correct.  Stories are written by computers that analyze an author’s style and then complete the story, much like the writing machine at the Academy of Lagado in Gulliver’s Travels.  Perhaps writing machines are the way to go.  Unlike author Silas Flannery, computers don’t resist product placement in their stories.

CCOM is a big fan of abbreviations, but OEPHLW takes the cake– Organization for the Electronic Production of Homogenized Literary Works.

Within Chapter [6] we (the Reader, you, and I) are swept into a story about Marana and a Sultan’s wife.  Marana (or Calvino) shares a classic that “is a trap-novel designed by the treacherous translator with beginnings of novels that remain suspended…”

Random note #1: Who knew that an author can write what he sees on the face of a reader and in doing so plagiarize?

Random note #2: Are you a person of “strong eyesight and nerves”  are you willing “to be subjected to the uninterrupted reading of novels“?  Contact the OEPHLW to volunteer to be a test reader.

Like “Looks down in the gathering shadow”, Chapter [6] also has an elevator scene.  This one doesn’t involve a murder, a plastic bag, and the mob.  It involves tricky translator Marana and a manuscript-stealing boy.  Which brings us to the next beginning of our next beginning.

Take six.