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 nine” through “Chapter twelve”
One fear readers might justifiably have while reading Calvino’s book is that nothing will be resolved. After all, if this is a book consisting entirely of incipits, then to resolve itself in any defined way seems to contradict its premise. Does Calvino resolve the issues on which the book has focused to your satisfaction? What do you take away from the book regarding the relationship of the reader to the work, the work to the author, the author to the reader, or the work to the broader culture?

Of course, the book has a second plot, the relationship between the Reader and the Other Reader? Does this plot resolve itself to your satisfaction? Why or why not?

Consider postmodernism in literature more broadly. Calvino thought that the relationship of literature to readers and the broader society was changing, and changing irrevocably. His works represent various ways to make literature new again, and maintain its relevance. Does the kind of experimentation and playfulness Calvino engages in have a future? Or do you think the postmodern loss of faith in the traditional concepts of mimesis and linear narrative was only a passing concern?
 
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