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.
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The Reader and the Other Reader consummate their relationship in these chapters, in a scene that is one of the strangest (yet, in my view, loveliest) such scenes in literature. Consider this book as a romance, in the lower-case r sense.
We have not talked much about characterization in this book, for the obvious reason that the central character is you, or rather “you.” But at this point we can think about what the various major, continuing characters — Ludmilla, Lotaria, Irnerio, and Ermes Marana — represent. They are all archetypes of ways that people can interact with the written word. Describe and contrast at least two.
We meet one more character in these chapters, Silas Flannery. His diary considers the issues the entire book has encompassed, but from the position of the writer. Indeed, one way we can read Silas Flannery is as Calvino’s alter ego (or one of them). Consider what the diary says and how Calvino understands — or at least thinks about — his own role as author.
Some themes we have already discussed, such as erasure and the different kinds of experiences literature offers (as described by Ludmilla whenever she talks about the kinds of books she likes to read) continue to develop in this reading. Feel free to write about any of them. |