In Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler I realized that when the author refer to “you” “the reader”, it is not just me who is reading the author is refering to in the passages. The “you” is actually a construction of another character that is part of the novel itself. I realized in chapter 2 that “you” is actually a man, and I am definitely not a man. Unfortunately, that is the limitation of writing in a second person point of view. Another reason I felt the you that the author addresses is not simply a general “you” as public audience reader is because the you have a specific personality and interest that the author ascribe to the you through discriptions of how “you” would react to certain situation. Nonetheless, the author direct involvement in dissecting the reading experience by explicitly stating what the readers should feel, react or pay attention to, I can very much identify with the “you” character. At some point it is difficult to differentiate the “you” (the male character or me) that the author is addressing. It is almost like a double layer you. When there are things that does not apply to me directly when the author refers to you, I would attribute the characteristic to the fictional “you”, as another character in the book. When there are statements that the author made to “you” that can be apply universally, many times I take it as if the author is addressing the real reader, which is me. For example, when the author states things such as, “If you, Reader, were already prepared, each time that character is introduced again…” or “Each sentence, in short, wants to convey to you…”(36-7) those broad statements directs the reader attention to what the author intend to do or how the reader should think about the conversation, I think those statement addresses the actual reader reading the book.
That is one convuluted paragraph above. I am even getting myself confuse in what I originally intended to say. On a different note, I find this sentence in the novel very applicable to my reading experience, “Whatever it may be, this is a novel where, once you have got into it, you want to go forward, without stopping.” (76) I realized as I make my way through this novel, as choppy each separate sections in the novel is or confusing it may be at some parts, once I started I just got to forge right through the novel, there is no stopping even though there is a different story after each chapter.