Reading Response Prompts
 

These prompts are meant to get you thinking about what you have read, and to help focus your thoughts for your reading responses. You can respond to any one of them, or, if you have another idea you would rather explore, you are free to write about that instead. Do not, however, attempt to answer multiple prompts for any assignment. If you choose to pursue an idea of your own or are not writing a response that day, you should still spend at least a few minutes thinking about each of the prompts in preparation for class. For more information, review the listserv assignment.
Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler: “Chapter four” through “In a network of lines that enlace”
One of the concepts that comes up repeatedly in this book is the idea of erasure: the erasure of texts, of authorship, of history both personal and collective, and ultimately of reality itself. Consider what this idea means to Calvino and how it manifests itself in these chapters.

If on a winter’s night a traveler is partly a satire. Satire is a form of comedy that exaggerates something recognizable in order to mock it. The paradox of satire is that in order to be funny the exaggeration must be broadly comic, but that in order to be effective the reader must realize on reflection that the depiction is less exaggerated than it first appears. We started to see the satire in the depiction of Professor Uzzi-Tuzii. It continues in these pages with the description of Lotaria’s seminar, as well as the publishing house where poor Mr. Cavedagna works. What is Calvino satirizing in these scenes?

In the midst of all the satire, Calvino also engages in considerable philosophical rumination on language, on authorship, on literature’s importance — or lack thereof — to culture and to an individual life. Actually, he does this both in the chapters describing the Reader’s experience and in the stories (or whatever we want to call them). Examine any passages engaging with these ideas that you find compelling.

As we have seen, Ludmilla repeatedly talks about a kind of book she would like to read, and then that kind of book always shows up immediately afterwards. Consider how any of these stories fulfills her readerly desires.
 
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