Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler introduces the “reader” to audiences in the first chapter as a generic middle-class citizen rushing to and from a bookstore in order to buy the very book that audiences are reading. The “reader’s” apparent excitement is slightly offset by various details in the way he observes his surroundings which indicate that his objective in reading this novel is not purely for enjoyment alone but rather to achieve some higher understanding of the world and thus improve his personal intellectual image. Though the “reader” seems to enjoy books and looks forward to reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, the first chapter ultimately suggests that he sees books as a means to an end. The story creates the “reader’s” complex reaction to the book and the reading process through the use of second person narration and consequent distance between the readers and the “reader” as well as details in observation and description which clearly define the “reader’s” hopes for what reading will yield.
In the hopes of projecting its message onto a broad audience, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler creates a “reader” as a distinct character whose perception of reading suggests a concurrent enjoyment and lack of appreciation for books. Reading is portrayed as a means of escape from the mundane routine of life, and yet simultaneously undermined by the wariness of the reader and his assumption that reading is a juvenile and childish hobby with mild effects. The reader is first presented as a jaded and guarded figure who expects little pleasure from the world but “grant[s] [him]self this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books”(4). This comment on the act of reading characterizes the reader as aged and unexcited about the experience of reading because of the labeling of reading as “youthful” and “carefully circumscribed”. Reading is depicted as a small and meticulously calculated area within which the reader could escape to a realm of childlike obliviousness where the “risk of disappointment isn’t serious”(4). Because of this, the act of reading is portrayed as a simple and innocent hobby out of place in the adult world, and yet the reader soon finds himself “shift[ing] a file and…find[ing] the book before [his] eyes…[he] opens it absently, [he] rest[s] [his] elbows on the desk, [he] rest[s] [his] temples against [his] hands, curled into fists,[he] seems to be concentrating on an examination of the papers and instead [he is] exploring the first pages of the novel”(7). This description of the reading experience creates an entirely different image in which reading is not only a rescue from the brutality of boredom but also as a sorely needed escape from reality that is alluring and indomitable. Reading is now perceived as a holistic and altruistic experience taking precedence over responsibility. The novel’s characterization of the reader and his complex reaction to reading is thus established as alluring yet strangely repellant due to an undeniable lust for personal gain.
Because of this complicated perception of reading, the reader is portrayed as personally attracted to reading and simultaneously repelled by it for fear of losing valuable time in regard to his own responsibilities. The book further illustrates this complexity by relating the reader’s experience in the bookstore to a wartime experience. The reader “[has] been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undetermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books [He’s] Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It’s Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”(5-6).