For January we're starting off the year reading a DOUBLE FEATURE - two books both of which have meta themes that skirt the lines between fantasy and reality.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvito is a 1979 classic, and can be easily found at most libraries and bookstores.
The Discarded by Hamilton is a newer book that is more difficult to find.
Feel free to read both or read only one!
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler: Summary from Goodreads:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. In another, it is a tragedy, a reflection on the difficulties of writing and the solitary nature of reading. The Reader buys a fashionable new book, which opens with an exhortation: "Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade." Alas, after 30 or so pages, he discovers that his copy is corrupted, and consists of nothing but the first section, over and over. Returning to the bookshop, he discovers the volume, which he thought was by Calvino, is actually by the Polish writer Bazakbal. Given the choice between the two, he goes for the Pole, as does the Other Reader, Ludmilla. But this copy turns out to be by yet another writer, as does the next, and the next.
The real Calvino intersperses 10 different pastiches—stories of menace, spies, mystery, premonition—with explorations of how and why we choose to read, make meanings, and get our bearings or fail to. Meanwhile the Reader and Ludmilla try to reach, and read, each other. If on a Winter's Night is dazzling, vertiginous, and deeply romantic. "What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space."
260 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 1979
Where to find it (11/24/2024) (please note that since this book was translated from Italian, there are often multiple entries for each translation)
Everand - ebook and audiobook
Audible
Free Library of Philadelphia: 1 audiobook, 2 ebooks, 1 hard copy
MontCo Library System: 6 hardcopies (multiple publication dates), 1 ebook
Delco Library System: 2 hardcopies.
The Discarded: Summary from Goodreads:
A dazzling array of meta-fictions, Colin Hamilton’s The Discarded describes the lonely work of a solitary librarian assigned to the discard room. This hidden basement space is piled high with books purged from the stacks above. Many have been damaged, defaced, or made irrelevant by time. Others simply sat untouched for years before being thrown out to make room for glossy new arrivals.
From the heap of discards, the librarian salvages his own idiosyncratic collection: a detective novel in which a damsel-in-distress insists she’s been murdered; A Guide to Universal Grasping, the “Ulysses of technical manuals;” a biography of David Markson written in the fragmented style of his experimental novels; an anthology of anthro-reptilian eroticism; a children’s book memorializing winter for those raised in an overheated world; a book of essays, The Hell of Insects, by entomologists who’ve been spoken to by their subjects; and a history of book burning.
With Borgesian panache, The Discarded interweaves stories about imaginary books with reflections on libraries, both real and dreamt. Hamilton’s nuanced collection asks a seemingly simple question: In an age of decreasing literacy, disposable content, and banned books, what do we preserve and what do we discard?
272 pages, Paperback
First published March 13, 2024
Where to find it (as of 11/22/2024)
Free Library of Philadelphia: 1 copy available. 7 holds
