A Winter's Night
Reading Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler for a second time thirty-two years after the first, I was heartened by how little of it I had remembered. A vague sketch of the concept had stayed with me, along with the name 'Ludmilla', among no more than a handful of other details. I dislike revisiting narrative fiction when my recollection of the story is too clear, and probably would not have finished it again had too many other particulars felt familiar. It is a book with several unrelated, deliberately truncated plot-lines, which would be harder (I imagine) to recall than a single narrative arc. In any event, I reckon three decades is at last a long enough interval after which I could profitably reacquaint myself with some of the other novels I read in my twenties.
In a text concerned with reading in so many of its guises, it's no surprise that re-reading gets a mention, as in the following view voiced by one of the library patrons in Chapter 11:
“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read [...] but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reding a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern? Every time I seek to relive the emotion of a previous reading, I experience different and unexpected impressions, and do not find again those of before [...]“
The impressions experienced on this encounter with the novel were just a little less favourable than those from my first. The sense of novelty that's part of its charm was unavoidably diminished, and I suspect I'm a fussier and more impatient reader in general nowadays. I felt some of the later chapters stretched their conceits too thinly, and that a couple of the nested narratives were a little weak. It doesn't speak well of my younger self, moreover, that I was so oblivious to Calvino's sexism back in the '90s. For all that, I've seldom – if ever – met with such buoyant & inventive writing about reading as I enjoyed again here.
Catching up with some reading this week I also finished George Saunders' examination of the art & craft of short-story writing – A Swim in a Pond in the Rain – which I much admired even if it did little to lessen my antipathy for the works of Anton Chekhov, one of the four Russian authors examined at length within. And I read Barley Patch, a first and perhaps last encounter with the work of idiosyncratic Australian Gerald Murnane. I'd had my apprehensions that his writing might not be to my taste, and indeed it wasn't: there were undoubtedly striking images and illuminating insights to be gleaned, but, for each such pay-off, there were too many pages of dogged pedantry to slog through for my liking. Beyond that, I simply didn’t much care for Murnane’s authorial company.
Wine of the week: Graham's 2020 LBV Port. While my usual taste is for a drier beverage, port has undeniable appeal at this time of year. A couple of glasses were a welcome treat on Saturday. I have to hope the head-cold that has taken hold since then doesn't linger, and I get to savour some more soon.