As Seferina points mentions in her post, I share a profound respect and admiration for the way Calvino is able to examine and experiment with the relationship between writer and reader.
I never assume I will addressed by the writer. Maybe because it is discomforting by nature or because I am just so ill-accustomed to its use, the second person narration really pushed me away. I wanted a fast, linearly moving story. I was getting a list of orders and an examination of my thoughts and behaviors as a reader.
Still, as I read more and started to understand Calvino’s devices a bit more, I also began to appreciate what he was doing. In the same way an artist creates something to be not merely seen, but experienced, a writer is after a similar experience with the reader. It really does feel as though the artist is next to us at the gallery, staring at the painting, or, in the narrative sense, next to us, on the couch as we read the book.
While it may sound creepy, or in the least — discomforting, I appreciate the consideration. By commenting on our reading behaviors, expectation and frustrations, naming them and expounding them, he acknowledges the essential role a reader plays. He even mentions in the novel, difficulties and errors in the printing process, as well as a debate on translation (Cimmerian Vs. Cimbrian). All of these elements, which can, in any novel, present barriers between a writer and the readers, are addressed by Calvino.
Calvino addresses reader assumptions in the following lines:
“I’m producing too many stories at once because what I want is for you to feel, around the story, a saturation of other stories that I could tell and maybe will tell or who know may have already told on some other occasion…” (109)
Calvino alludes to the fact that readers are inundated with stories read and experienced which inform their experiences as a reader.
Calling the novel, metafiction definitely characterizes the way the novel is very self-aware. Aware of itself and also aware of its relationship with the reader, both proving the existence of the important relationship the reader and writer share and simultaneously testing their limits.
“While it may sound creepy, or in the least — discomforting, I appreciate the consideration. By commenting on our reading behaviors, expectation and frustrations, naming them and expounding them, he acknowledges the essential role a reader plays.” I agree with this, and I think that even further, by acknowledging the role of the reader Calvino forces US to think about it quite critically, which turns into a very uncomfortable situation. You could consider this novel to be metafiction, but in that same vein, we are also meta-reading–i.e. we are reading about the reading process, and are forced to really question our reading process as we read. I think this can be very strange and uncomfortable to readers at first, since we all seem to identify with Ludmilla’s insistence that she wants a novel that just has a good plot, nicely developed characters, a good beginning and an ending. What Calvino does is complicates this process that we’re all so accustomed to–a process that’s been drilled into us since we first learned to read. We learn a lot about ourselves through this metareading, but our natural impulse is to resist it. Even once we concede to Calvino’s insistances, we still long for the reading process that we’re most familiar with.