Line #51 Literature/IfOnAWintersNightATraveler


1	[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ifonawintersnight.gif]]
2	[[caption-width-right:310:You are looking at the cover to ''If on a winter's night a traveler''.]]
3	You are about to begin reading the Website/TVTropes entry on Creator/ItaloCalvino's classic 1979 novel ''If on a winter's night a traveler''. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Close all other browser windows. Find a comfortable position to read -- don't lean in too close, you'll strain your eyes, but don't lean too far back, or you might miss vital words on the screen. Adjust the light. Stretch your legs. Do you have any drinks or snacks nearby in case you get hungry? Anything else? Do you have to go to the bathroom?
4
5	Italo Calvino's novel ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' is about you. You are trying to read Italo Calvino's book ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' when something quite annoying happens: there was an error and only the first exciting chapter is there. So you go back to the bookstore and try to exchange your copy of ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' for another one, but the person at the bookstore tells you that the chapter you just read -- which you wish to continue reading, after all -- was not actually a part of ''If on a winter's night a traveler'' at all, but rather a different book entirely.
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7	And so you go off in search of that book and, naturally, you find [[HilarityEnsues hilarity]], an international book-fraud conspiracy, and [[LoveTropes true love]].
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9
10	!!These are the tropes you find in Italo Calvino’s ''If on a winter’s night a traveler'':
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12	* ArcWords: An interesting example, where each of the titles of the books you read add up to an entirely new first sentence of a book. It goes [[spoiler:''If, on a winter's night, a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope, without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow (in a network of lines that interlace/in a network of lines that intersect) on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave, what story down there awaits its end? (he asks, anxious to hear the story)'']]
13	* AudienceSurrogate: The Reader for male readers, Ludmilla/the Other Reader for female readers.
14	* BookEnds: A variant - the book begins with you reading ''If on a winter's night a traveler'', and ends with you finishing the book.
15	* TheDulcineaEffect: Ludmilla has this on [[AudienceSurrogate you]], Silas Flannery, and Ermes Marana. It's also a running theme in the various [[ShowWithinAShow novels]].
16	%% * FictionalDocument
17	* GenreShift: Each even numbered passage is a new first chapter of a different book you are reading and is a slightly different genre, from detective fiction to romance.
18	** [[spoiler:Or is it a different variation/translation of the same chapter?]]
19	%%* HappilyMarried: By the end of the book, [[spoiler:you are]].
20	* MetaFiction: It's about ''you'' trying to read ''If on a winter's night a traveler''.
21	%% * MindScrew
22	* MilkmanConspiracy: There's an international plot to mislabel and bind books so you'll never read the right one, involving an evil translator, faceless publishers, and the government of a Latin American dictatorship. [[MindScrew Or so it appears.]]
23	* MultipleNarrativeModes: The FrameStory is narrated in the second person. All the internal stories are narrated in either the first or third person. Sometimes this is used to refer to both narrators simultaneously.
24	%% * PaintingTheMedium
25	%% * PhilosophicalNovel
26	%% * PostModernism
27	* PresentTenseNarrative
28	* PyrrhicVictory: Implied to be the case for the mastermind behind events (if indeed there is one). [[spoiler: Ermes Marana (apparently) manages to stage a massive scale fraud / conspiracy / undermining of the entire publishing and reading world... but it's suggested that he only did any of it in order to get Ludmilla to fall for him, which failed.]]
29	* RunningGag: You never get to read past the first chapter of any book (except for ''If on a winter's night a traveler'', which you eventually finish).
30	* SecondPersonNarration: Only in the FramingDevice, and once digresses as to who exactly You is - whether The Reader, or Ludmilla, or both of them.
31	* SeriousBusiness: Books, their interpretations, and reading in general are important to all characters, and enough so that a global conspiracy exists to prevent books from getting read start to end.
32	%% * ShowWithinAShow: ''Books within a book'' actually.
33	* StrawmanPolitical: Ludmilla's sister Lotaria is a parody of self-righteous politically-minded students and readers who just boil down works of art and literature into their political subtexts and focus on them to the exclusion of anything else. At one point she claims that if she feeds the words of a book into a computer, she can know exactly what the book's about without ever reading it just by counting how frequently certain words appear. She has nothing but contempt for Ludmilla's more apolitical approach to literature and her desire to read just for entertainment and escapism, but the novel suggests that for all her political awareness and progressiveness ultimately Lotaria (and, by extension, people like her) is actually the much more narrow-minded and limited one. Ludmilla is open to having her mind changed and her views challenged by what she reads, whereas Lotaria rigidly and unquestioningly adheres to her chosen dogma, reduces books purely to their political subtexts and focuses on them to the total exclusion of anything else, and doesn't acknowledge or appreciate anything that doesn't conform exactly to her own narrow political views and prejudices.
34	* TropeName
35	* TheUnseen: You never actually meet [[spoiler: the infamous Ermes Marana.]]
36	* WhatTheHellHero: At one point towards the end, the author lambasts you for just drifting passively through events and bouncing from place to place instead of taking a more active role in what's going on. [[spoiler: You're also told off for getting aroused by the female revolutionary who may or may not be Lotaria who may or may not be holding you hostage by pointing out that you're already attracted to Ludmilla, you're not entitled to have it off with every female character in the book just because you're the protagonist, and you don't even ''like'' Lotaria.]]
37
38	!! These are the tropes you find within the books within ''If on a winter's night a traveler''
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40	* AsianAndNerdy: Narrator of "On a Carpet of Leaves Illuminated By The Moon."
41	* CherryBlossoms: Replaced by gingko leaves in "On a Carpet of Leaves," but a similar aesthetic and philosophical association remains.
42	* CliffHanger: Ubiquitous.
43	* FarEast: Japan, in "On a Carpet of Leaves." Our narrator and his stern mentor spend much time contemplating the [[CherryBlossoms falling gingko leaves]], and the narrator appears to be learning a Zen-like mode of consciousness, isolating particular sensations to understand them completely.
44	* FemmeFatale: Irina in "Without Fear of Wind or Vertigo."
45	* TheFool: The narrator of "Leaning From the Steep Slope."
46	* GeneHunting: After his father's death, Nacho from "Around an Empty Grave" goes looking for his mother. He has a very hard time getting a straight answer.
47	* [[HisNameIs Her Name Is]]: The protagonist of "Around an Empty Grave" sees this coming with his father's death, but is unable to keep the trope from being played absolutely straight.
48	* IconicItem: Irina's hat with the rose on it.
49	* LatinoIsBrown: The novel includes a story about a population in Latin America where the indigenous people and the European people all look the same. This is implied to be a product of interbreeding.
50	* LoveInterests: AlwaysFemale, and run the gamut from sweet and naive, to sadistic and controlling, and everything in between.
51	* TheMole: in "Without Fear of Wind or Vertigo."
52	* MultipleChoicePast: the narrator of "Looks Down in the Gathering Shadow." He's constantly trying to escape one life after another.
53	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: in "What Story Down There Awaits Its End?"
54	* NoNameGiven: For almost all of the protagonists. %% Exception?
55	* ProperlyParanoid: The professor who narrates "In a Network of Lines that Enlace." Notably, even ''he'' thinks he's being way too paranoid, until the very end. And this same trait absolutely backfires on the narrator of "In a Network of Lines that Intersect."
56	* SuperpowerMeltdown: In "What Story Down There Awaits Its End?" the main character doesn't even realize he's having a meltdown. He erases almost the whole world from existence before he realizes he can't bring it back.
57	* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: It's entirely possible that the narrator of "Leaning From the Steep Slope" is not mentally stable.
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59	----
60	''You have now finished reading the Website/TVTropes entry on Italo Calvino's ''If on a winter's night a traveler''. Thank you.''

Context Literature / IfOnAWintersNightATraveler