Good morning!
How are you? I hope fine.
Today review is about a very “curious” book.
I do not know about you, but I had read just few pieces taken by The Path to the Nest of Spiders and Orlando furioso di Ludovico Ariosto raccontato da Italo Calvino.
I mean, the worst.
Precisely because of that, I was not very convinced of this author, but some years ago I ran into others of his works like, for example, The Cosmicomics or The baron in the Trees which made me change idea and convinced to give Calvino a second chance.
This book is probably one of the strangest I have ever read, but, at the same time, I think it is a true masterpiece.
But let’s go on order.
“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. […] Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room.”
The protagonist of these stories is us. Me, you, your neighbour, that weird guy who lives down the street, the Australian fascinated by Italian literature who bumped into this book… I mean, the Reader.
After having faced many bookshop obstacles like “The Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered “or “The Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First”, the Reader has finally found the book he wanted: If on a winter’s night a traveler.
He goes home and starts reading it – and we with him.
But after few pages, the book abruptly stops.
There has been a misprint and the volume has only the first dozens of pages that keep repeating for the whole book.
Broken, the Reader returns to the bookshop in order to ask the missing part.
They give it to him but, alas!, it is the wrong book!
The Reader decides to read it anyway – and we with him.
We get into this new story but, suddenly, this book also abruptly stops.
Another damned misprint!
So, we follow the Reader in his readings, his researches, his discovers, his weird adventures, his relationship with a Female Reader, an Author and a Publisher and, at the same time, we lose ourselves in ten other books, none of which we (both we and the Reader) will have the chance to finish.
This book does not want to tell a story, it wants, in a way, to talk about the two big world revolving around a book: readers’ world and writers’.
“I’ve tried to give prominence to the fact that every book is born in the presence of other books, in relation and in comparison to other books” Calvino himself declared and, in my opinion, he is more than successful.
To sum up, I sincerely recommend this book (especially to aspiring writers and enthusiastic readers), a little light reading which happens also to be deep, full of messages, whose ending will leave you with a complicit smile on the mouth.
IL CAPPUCCINO 