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See also: Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Ficciones 245 ■ Hopscotch 274 –75 ■
The French Lieutenant’s Woman 291 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s
Night a Traveler is acknowledged
as one of the metafiction novel’s
finest modern incarnations, with
a mesmerizing narrative plot that
not only challenges traditional
narrative forms but also asks the
reader to interrogate the actual
process of reading.
As with the finest examples of
metafictional texts, the opening
words of If on a Winter’s Night
a Traveler immediately demand
that the reader undertake a
process preparatory to actually
commencing the “story”: “You
are about to begin reading Italo
Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s
night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate.
Dispel every other thought. Let the
world around you fade.”
The self-reflection by Calvino
in the first sentence is a typically
metafictional device. Half the
first chapter is a guide to “you”
preparing for the very real task of
reading this book; it is a somewhat
mesmeric world—reminiscent of
the metafictional playfulness of
Jorge Luis Borges’ work—as though
Calvino has some insight into the
processes of each reader’s mind as
they embark on reading his book.A fantasy of fictions
After the meditative beginning,
Calvino proceeds to plunge the
reader into what appears to be a
more traditional narrative plot. A
character (“you”) keeps starting
a book, but due to various
circumstances cannot continue;
in his quest to finish the books
he meets a female reader who he
(“you”) falls in love with. He also
discovers a conspiracy to render
all books false and meaningless.
This rather strange narrative taleis fractured by further metafictional
reflection: the reader is questioned
about their reaction to the book,
and thereby invoked as one of the
novel’s protagonists.
A distinct structural form runs
through the novel. Each chapter
is in two parts: the first is written
in second-person form (“you”) and
concerned with the very process
of reading; the second part, being
the beginning of a new book, is
seemingly an original narrative.
The influence of the Oulipo—
a group of French writers who
experimented with new and
demanding literary forms, which
Calvino joined in 1968—is evident
in these structural constraints.A narrative maze
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
introduces the reader to imaginary
writers of fictional works that do
not exist, to fabricated biographies,
and even to countries that are
invented—all are common traits
of metafiction. The reader is
guided into a narrative maze
by a masterful storyteller—one
who delights in playing eccentric
postmodern games. The experience
is utterly captivating. ■Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was born in
Cuba in 1923 and was two
when he moved to Italy with
his parents, who were
returning home. Having
settled in Turin during World
War II, Calvino fought for the
Italian Resistance, before
turning to journalism at the
war’s end, writing for the
communist paper L’Unità. Not
long after the war, in 1947, his
first novel, The Path to the
Spiders’ Nests, was published.
Calvino left the Italian
Communist Party in 1957,
after the Soviet invasion of
Hungary. In 1964, he married
Esther Judith Singer, resettled
in Rome, and focused on the
short stories that would form
the collection Cosmicomics.
Calvino moved with
his family to Paris in 1968,
where he joined the group
of innovative writers known
as Oulipo, short for Ouvroir
de littérature potentielle
(“workshop of potential
literature”). He died in 1985
from a cerebral haemorrhage.Other key works1957 The Baron in the Trees
1959 The Nonexistent Knight
1965 Cosmicomics
1972 Invisible CitiesOne reads alone, even
in another’s presence.
If on a Winter’s Night
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