Hey buddy, you notice that big, pink elephant?

Hey buddy, you notice that big, pink elephant?

I just finished If on a Winter's Night a Traveler last night. I was anticipating some kind of twist ending because when I was doing background stuff last week, a guy came up to me and started talking about the book. He said he'd read it and--this being the key--he "thought he was a pretty bright guy", but he didn't see the ending coming at all. Now, if you've read the book, you know that there isn't really a big surprise at the end. There's a small, clever revelation that most people would have figured out early in the book. After finishing the book, I was thinking of what that guy had said (among other things more directly book-related) and feeling like he missed all the big neon signs along the way. The signs that said, "The ending doesn't matter!" or "The experience is the thing!" It's not like Calvino was reticent about his intentions for the novel within every chapter of the book.

There's a quote from the book--the only one I highlighted, I believe--that pretty much sums up in Calvino's words why authors of literature write and why readers read (spoken by the author character Silas Flannery): "I expect readers to read in my books something I didn't know, but I can expect it only from those who expect to read something they didn't know." Of course, it's difficult to say what Calvino didn't know he was doing with his novel. It is--to use a much maligned prefix for any of those studying "texts" instead of films or books--very meta-.

Just makes me think that the Fellow Reader missed out on what the book was about. Then again, ...a Traveler also discusses--among other things--the subjectivity of the reading experience. So perhaps I missed something special about the ending, but I'd just like to think that I'm a more sensitive reader than the other guy.

D