Calvino demonstrates the power of the writer in If on a winter’s night a traveler. The reader is treated to a performance in which the author challenges the conventions of the novel. First, there is the structure of the book itself, which does not merely progress from chapter to chapter, building a story, but rather utilizes two parallel threads to pull the reader along: the numbered chapters, and the titled chapters. Calvino also breaks the invisible wall between story and reader, bringing the reader into the story, even while the reader is uncertain what constitutes the story.
Reading the table of contents may provide a clue as to what the author intended to accomplish with this novel: the chapter titles themselves, read in sequence, convey a sense of one looking down on a town from above, and asking, “What story down there awaits its end?” Perhaps Calvino wishes the reader to be cognizant of how a shift in perspective, or a whim of the author, may change this story, or any story.
The author deconstructs the relationship between reader and novel. He writes in Chapter Three, “The novel you are reading wants to present to you a corporeal world, thick, detailed.” The action comes to life to the point of directly affecting his character the reader. For example, after Chapter One, at the start of the chapter titled “If on a winter’s night a traveler,” we do not encounter the literal beginning of a novel, but rather we are told about the beginning of the novel that the reader is viewing: “The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph.” We, the readers, are not reading a novel; rather, we are reading about other readers reading stories, and the action described alternates between these worlds. In Chapter Four, Ludmilla states that “Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.” Calvino seems to relish using this uncertainty to entertain his readers.
I’m glad you called attention to the way the “chapters” begin with a description of what we’re reading, rather than the chapter itself. We are, as you say, “reading about other readers reading stories.” In an earlier comment, Lauren called this meta-reading, which is an apt phrase. We’ll be looking at other forms of meta-reading this semester, and what the implications are of this kind of hyperaware reading.