If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Author: Italo Calvino

Rating: ⭐ 5/5

Date Read: 2013/12/23

Pages: 260

Sometimes, when I get distracted from what I’m reading (which is more often than I’d like to admit), I sample the first chapters of other books. Some are so sublime that I jump in, feet first, and barely come up for air until I’ve finished the whole book ([b:Middlemarch|19089|Middlemarch|George Eliot|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1386924110s/19089.jpg|1461747]). Other first chapters I return to time and time again, without really feeling the need to read the rest of the book ([b:Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320], which I did finish eventually). Most often, I sample a first chapter and file it away, so that I can pick up the book again when I’m in the apposite mood.

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is a collection of beginnings, with a parallel story that explains the beginnings in a way that makes more sense than you might imagine. Yes, this is meta-fiction, and I think that someone who doesn’t really enjoy that might be disappointed. But if postmodernism is your thing, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Perhaps unsurprisingly, mine edition became heavily annotated.

Of course, beginnings are only fun for so long. After reading just the first chapters of a bunch of different books, I start to feel a little dirty, like I’ve done something I’m not proud of. The same thing happened here: I’m glad to be back to reading novels that start, then have a middle, then end. That’s really the way it’s meant to be.