I felt somewhat disappointed in reading this last sections of Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler. All along I was intriqued by the mini-stories inserted within the general narrative, even if they do not have an ending, and the quest of the readers to find the complete volume; however when I read this last part the novel somehow lost its appeal. I think it might be due to the fact that the plot become too chaotic that it no longer resembles the style or characters that was presented to us in the first half of the book. Only at the last fifty pages there the events are completely strange and bizzare. The mini-stories between the narratives I already expected to be different, but now even the general narratives are twisted. In addition, there are lots more generalized thoughts and insights that the feel of the novel become more philosophical, metaphysical pondering on the act of reading experience instead of a story. It seems like Calvino, knows that he is wrapping up the novel, so therefore if we haven’t already grasped the vision that this novel is resembling something like “ergodic literature” idea, it’ll be stated all the more clearly.
One thought on “Reaction of Calvino’s conclusion”
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Of the last chapters, one of the more interesting to me was “What story down there awaits its end.” It reminds me of the Men in Black movies and cartoons. In “Men in Black,” there is a secret group that deal with aliens. In the Calvino book there is a group refered to as Section D. It is as if they are some covert group in the government kinda. This chapter also reminded me of something called Doctor Who. There have been various movies and series made with him. Doctor Who is about a dude who travels through space and time in machine called the Tartus. He goes on all sorts of crazy adventures. As I read the part of the chapter that talked about how the world was disappearing around the character in the chapter, it was like right of a situation that I might see in a Doctor Who episode/movie.
The “Around an empty grave” chapter was interesting. It was a loop. What happened to the main characters father the son was repeating. One thing that separates it from the other chapters is that there doesn’t seem to be a primary love interest in it.