Thursday, May 04, 2023

If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

This novel by Italo Calvino is a complex woven fabric. 

Ambitious in its vision to ruminate on entire arc of book reading and writing. This novel embarks on a journey to every possible place related to books. A Reader is never satiated , he is always in search of a book , he is ever immersed in his mission to read books ever distracted by the search for meaning. Novel begins and ends with overwhelming view points -It begins as  "you expect nothing from life" and ends with story of a complete wipe out of things you do not need. 

Reader is a man who strings a narrative on his own in addition to what the author has already spun. Towards end of the novel through a revelatory episode we see through this multiplicities of narrative with  clarity. That single paragraph strung impromptu by a new character using already existing details reveals the beauty of narrative building and search for a meaning in general. Our Inclination to search for the meaning in that defining paragraph is Highly revelatory, We also risk missing to see the futility, the fun and misunderstanding about a thing called Life. 

Novel is so grounded in a sense it always strives to gives us a picture of what is. Even thoughts are seen as objects appearing from somewhere and disappear on arrival of another thought. Novel keeps us grounded, allows us to enjoy the episodic fun before futility arrives. Each episode is written based on different genre and flavour, allowing us to immerse into vagaries of story telling.Novel comes out as a Slyly woven complex fabric of the plot, the reader, reading process, academia, publishing, government control and search for a narrative and meaning in the ocean of words.

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அசோகமித்திரன் in "விடுதலை" - "புரிந்து கொள்வதால் என்ன பயன், புரிந்து கொள்வது தான் பயன் " 

போகன் சங்கர் in Facebook -  "பிரபஞ்சம், அதன்  விதிகளை அறிந்து கொள்ள முயல்பவர்களை கடுமையாக தண்டிக்கும்"

Anecdote from a Veda class -"Do not bother much about meaning of Vedas, you will land no where, just repeat the verses,  Yes it's good to know the meaning, but even if you do not understand the meaning it is fine, God knows the meaning and it is sufficient.

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