Zachary L Hammerman is reading If on a winter

Zachary L Hammerman is reading If on a winter’s night a traveler

You are about to begin reading Zachary L Hammerman’s new essay, "Zachary L Hammerman is reading If on a winter’s night a traveler." This essay will focus on "Chapter One," seven pages of introduction to the aforementioned novel which, in all his sincerity, the author professes never to have encountered until now.

One versed in academia and acquainted with the directive for this essay will surely object to the selection of "Chapter One" on several grounds: first, that "Chapter One" is not para-textual per se, but seemingly the textual equal of any other chapter in the novel; second, that "Chapter One" seems to cater to the demands of the assignment only too well, exposed in all those places where a more modest (and consequently, more challenging) para-textual document commonly would be concealed; and finally, these allowances granted, that the choice is an obvious one hardly indicative of the broad range of para-textual documents available to a student of Comparative Literature.

I will keep all three of these charges in mind in attempting to answer a more narrowly defined set of questions; particularly: how does "Chapter One" orient the reader to the text it accompanies? how would you describe the reader "Chapter One" assumes? what attitudes toward reading – toward books – does "Chapter One" reveal? what can you infer about reading practices of that period? where might we expect If on a winter’s night a traveler to be read? under what conditions? lastly, what does "Chapter One" tell us about the purpose or objective of If on a winter’s night a traveler?

Of course, my intention is not to insult you. "Chapter One" is more explicitly self-conscious of its relationship to the reader than the hundreds of more modestly attired texts we might have chosen. Nonetheless, a predilection for nakedness is not necessarily a predilection for indecency. Rather, I have chosen "Chapter One" precisely because it seems to preclude all commentary relevant to our investigation, articulating as it were the entire spectrum of readerly concerns.

To demonstrate this, I have constructed a reading map for "Chapter One" and attached it as an appendix to this essay. The color coding is explained in a key on the first page: orange, red, and blue underlining trace (literally) the development of readerly concerns outlined above. Each color block of text is labeled in the margin according to color and frequency for citation purposes. For example, B3 corresponds to the third occurrence of a blue block of text.

On the one hand, the colored mapping of the appendix makes any further consideration of readerly concerns in isolation from one another redundant. On the other hand, it also allows us to consider these color blocks from a more complicated perspective: that of polyphony. What follows are conclusions I have drawn by examining the three paths in a network of lines that enlance, in a network of lines that intersect. My thesis? "Chapter One" is intricately designed to perpetuate the act of reading.

Chapter One is Blue and Orange

The blue and orange color blocks of "Chapter One" perpetuate the act of reading by overstating the significance of novelty. Informing this rhetorical strategy is an acute appreciation for the resolve of you the reader: in the next room the others are watching TV, succumbing to the pleasures of a "dimension of time [that] has been shattered," one where "we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears."(B6)

You, conversely, are a reader, determined to "rediscover the continuity of time … in the novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." (B6) And yet, what possessed you to read this novel in particular, a book written not during that "period that lasted no more than a hundred years," (B6) but rather during the uneventful years leading up to its copyright in 1979?

By all accounts, you "noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter’s night a traveler had appeared" so you went to the bookshop and bought it. (O2) Or rather, you "forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade" of an infinite infantry of books, reduced "the countless embattled troops" to a more manageable array, and "grasped a copy" of If on a winter’s night a traveler "fresh off the presses." (O2) Though paramilitary purchases may be uncharacteristic for a reader such as yourself, "Chapter One" justifies such an excursion on the premise that "[y]ou derive a special pleasure from a just-published book." After all, you are the kind of reader who "hope[s] always to encounter true newness." (B3) As both a physical and literary object "Chapter One" promises exactly that.

Shklovsky, Jauss and Fish On the Merits of Blue and Orange

Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky: "The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived, and not as they are known. And what better premise than that a novel will be novel? The reader purchases ‘the new book by Italo Calvino, who ha[s]n’t published for several years.’ (O2) The laudatory quotes on the back of the jacket are ‘generic phrases that don’t says a great deal.’ (O5) To top it off, the familiar tone of Calvino ‘seems to have absolutely no connection with all the rest he has written.’ (O6) By laying bare its technique, ‘Chapter One’ defamiliarizes its art: it makes objects unfamiliar, forms difficult, and thus prolongs the process of perception as an aesthetic end in itself."

German reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss: "This text violates any half-witted reader’s horizon of expectations. The way a text perceives a reader and the way a reader perceives himself must be congruent in order for the reader to establish some normative sense of comfort and continue the act of reading. The strict constraints which "Chapter One" places on the reader in terms of both personal biases and physical reality contradict this principle. How many of us besieged a bookshop to buy a copy of If on a winter’s night a traveler when it was fresh off the presses in 1979?"

American critic of seventeenth-century English literature Stanley Fish: "The way a reader perceives himself is by no means fixed: a reader adopts and discards certain physical and physiological traits by adapting to and extracting from the literary constraints of the text at hand. Thus ‘Chapter One’ perpetuates the act of reading by constructing a very sophisticated sense of anticipation where previously there might have been none."

Chapter One is Orange and Red

The orange and red color blocks of "Chapter One" perpetuate the act of reading by superficially postponing its inauguration. You the reader "are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel," (O1) but first you must close the door to avoid the racket of the TV, find a comfortable reading position, adjust the lighting, place your cigarettes within reach, and pee. (R1, R2) You also must purge from your desires (conscious or unconscious) all those books in the bookshop which you might have purchased instead of the Calvino novel. (O2) Of course, you are eager to "see how it begins," (O3) but you must "restrain your impatience and wait to open the book at home." (R5)

Even those practices of reading which constitute habits tend to delay "the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book:" (B7) you open the book "to page one, no, to the last page, first you want to see how long it is;" (O4) you "scan the sentences on the back of the jacket;" (O5) you pause to ruminate on "the unmistakable tone of the author." (O6) No, it seems you the reader do not intend to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel at all. Rather, you engage in various forms of meta-reading, trusting circumstance, psyche and habit to give you pause.

Miller, Eliot, and Barthes On the Merits of Orange and Red

American deconstructionist J. Hillis Miller: "Brilliant. With more finesse than the reader who convinces a text it has not yet been read, ‘Chapter One’ actually convinces the reader he has not yet begun to read!"

American poet, dramatist and critic T. S. Eliot: "A disciplined and impersonal narration is essential if literature is to approach the condition of science. No reader cares to immerse himself in the superfluous explication of all those habits which may or may not have taken place prior to the opening of the novel. What’s more, a text which feigns concern for the reader’s bladder is nothing more than bathroom reading."

French critic Roland Barthes: "And yet, it is through this series of para-textual delays that the reader comes to experience the jouissance of the first seven pages of the novel. Remember: some readers prefer to read in bathrooms. And some poetry is deserving of it."

Chapter One is Red and Blue

The red and blue color blocks of "Chapter One" perpetuate the act of reading by understating the significance of reading and books in general. You as a reader are characterized by melancholy: you don’t expect the others watching TV in the next room to turn down the volume so you can read, you "just hope they’ll leave you alone." (R1)

As an ambivalent reader you are full of contradictions: you search for a comfortable reading position knowing full well that "the ideal position for reading is something you can never find;" (R1, B1) "you’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything from anything," yet you still expect something from books – "where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn’t serious." (B2) At the extreme side of your personality, you are torn between the "intermittent temptations" of reading and the enduring obligation of "a patient stretched out on the operating table with his guts exposed." (R5)

Culler, Holland and White On the Merits of Red and Blue

American structuralist Jonathan Culler: "In order for a text to become literature the reader must possess enough literary competence to make sense of the forms and structures he encounters. This competence informs the strategy of every novelist: a writer writes to be read. ‘Chapter One’ errs by presuming exactly the opposite, that the reader is a miserable personality whose conception of time is too fragmented to settle on a single novel for any substantial amount of reading. Though novel, the idea of expecting so little from the reader may be novel is also insulting. Rather than perpetuate the act of reading, it merely predisposes the reader to a reciprocal evaluation: that the novel expects nothing from the reader, so the reader should expect nothing from the novel."

American ego-psychology theorist Norman Holland: "When we read a text, we process it in accordance with our identity theme: we use the literary work to replicate ourselves. If ‘the best [a reader] can expect is to avoid the worst,’ (B2) it only follows that the best an author can expect is to address the worst kind of reader.

American historian Hayden White: "Any preface must answer the question, why read this novel at all? If on a winter’s night a traveler contrives a clever response: precisely because it is a novel, and all novels are impotent. ‘Chapter One’ does not promise to titillate, initiate or instill virtue, nor does it guarantee that the reader will procure any ‘extraordinary experiences’ (B2) from the text it accompanies. Rather, the introduction offers a candid concession of its own inadequacies. This concession puts the lethargic personality of the reader at ease, ‘in [his] personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs.’ (B2) It is this normative sense of comfort which inspires the reader to find a comfortable reading position, kick up his feet, and continue reading, confronting something and not quite knowing yet what it is. (B8)

Red, Orange, Blue

By intricately weaving together tropes of anticipation, procrastination, and lethargic tranquillity, "Chapter One" of If on a winter’s night a traveler perpetuates the act of reading. I hope my polyphonic readings of the red, orange and blue concerns outlined above have not been so complicated that the explications of those far better versed in literary theory than myself could not make them clear, nor so transparent as to warrant no further investigation. In the end, I hope to have demonstrated only this: that you confronted something without quite knowing what it was, but that the risk of disappointment wasn’t serious.

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