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In a network of lines that intersect
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If on a winter’s night a traveler, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Act of Reading
Academia and Publishing
Censorship and Government Oppression
Love, Lust, and Anxiety
Summary
Analysis
The narrator is Silas Flannery, who is writing in his diary. Every day before going to work at his typewriter, he likes to use a spyglass to look out from his chalet at a woman who is reading in a deck chair. Sometimes, when he’s writing, he imagines that the woman is reading the very sentence that he is in the middle of writing, watching him write just as he watches her read.
Once again, a story revolves around a man who is fascinated by a woman who is always at a distance to him. This time, however, the audience expects another chapter about the Reader and instead gets a chapter of diary entries by Silas Flannery. As a writer, Flannery provides a different perspective from most of the characters the novel has introduced so far, many of whom were readers, not writers.
Themes
The narrator sometimes thinks of his books as already existing, and so his writing is just an attempt to translate them into a readable form. He has an idea for a story about two writers, one who’s productive and one who’s tormented. At first the productive writer dismisses the tormented writer’s work as bad, but as he watches the tormented writer struggle, he begins to feel that in fact, it is his own work that’s superficial.
While Marana is in some ways a surrogate for Calvino (the real author, not the character in this novel), Flannery is another potential surrogate. Flannery’s books seem to have a very different reputation from Calvino’s (Calvino’s work is literary, whereas Flannery’s is pulpy), but this chapter could suggest some truths in the writing process that hold true for both pulp and literary fiction.
Themes
In the narrator’s imagined story, there is a young woman reading a book in the sun. Perhaps the young woman receives a manuscript each from the productive writer and the tormented writer, only to realize that the two manuscripts are identical. Or perhaps she mixes the manuscripts up and returns each to the wrong writer, offending them. The narrator imagines many other possible things that could happen to mess up the manuscripts.
This passage questions the popular idea that making art involves suffering. Flannery seems to want to believe that suffering is not helpful and that it would be better to be able to work like the more productive writer. This desire is no doubt motivated by the fact that Flannery himself is experiencing writer’s block and doesn’t want to have to suffer from it any more.
Themes
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In the real world, at his desk, the narrator has a poster of Snoopy typing “It was a dark and stormy night…” He is fascinated by how the “It” suggests an action that’s totally impersonal. The narrator feels he’ll have to take down his Snoopy poster because with it up, he gets so interested in beginnings and the potential they represent that he can never finish any of his works.
Snoopy is a dog from the popular comic strip Peanuts. “It was a dark and stormy night…” is supposedly a bad and cliched beginning to a novel, and yet Flannery finds something interesting about it. This suggests how Flannery also finds interest in pulp books in general (as well as mirroring how the real author Calvino finds interest in the fake pulp author Flannery).
Themes
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The narrator begins copying lines from Crime and Punishment to try to see what makes a good beginning. He gets a visit from a man claiming to be his translator, warning him that unauthorized translations of his books have been popping up recently—but in fact these books aren’t anything the narrator himself has ever written. The narrator acts insulted by the fakes, but in fact a part of him is intrigued and perhaps even flattered. He learns that his translator’s name is Ermes Marana.
Like many characters in the story, Flannery worries that his attempts to communicate are getting garbled and misunderstood. Once again, Marana creates doubt wherever he goes, making Flannery fear that, even if he finds the right words to write, Marana might somehow change them in the translation process, distorting his message.
Themes
Ermes Marana explains to the narrator that he currently lives in Japan. He gets off track talking about a theory of how authors are all fictional characters, invented by authors to tell their stories. The narrator keeps thinking of his conversation with Marana even days later and how it applies to his own writing methods. He thinks about how the Koran was a collaboration between Mohammad and a scribe. Mohammad allowed the scribe to write the final lines of the Koran, which cause the scribe to lose his faith in Mohammad, but in fact, it was always Allah’s plan to include the scribe’s ending.
The Koran is the holy book of Islam, and Mohammad is the prophet who founded Islam. The narrator compares the process of Mohammad writing the Koran with a scribe to his own writing process. Just as tradition holds that Allah revealed the words of the Koran verbatim to Mohammad and his scribe, Flannery and Marana have their own unusual relationship. Supposedly, Flannery dictates the precise words that Marana translates, but in fact, Marana seems to add some chaos to the translation, just as Mohammad’s scribe potentially adds something to the Koran with his final lines.
Themes
The narrator tries not to think of people like publishers and literary agents who are awaiting his novel. He goes for a walk on a mountain trail and meets some boys trying to spot UFOs. They say they’ve heard of a writer nearby in the middle of a crisis and believe aliens are sending him ideas to his brain that he isn’t even aware of. The narrator wonders if it really is possible that his writing is being determined by extraterrestrials.
This passage explores a modern version of the writing of the Koran, suggesting how in the past people believed that Allah was dictating the words to a writer but now people believe in UFOs sending messages to Flannery’s brain. While the addition of aliens might seem outlandish, this chapter sticks so closely to Flannery’s perspective that it’s difficult to tell what Flannery might not be perceiving, including whether or not he is actually receiving alien messages.
Themes
Still, the narrator has writer’s block. A girl named Lotaria is writing a thesis on one of his novels and comes to visit him. The narrator is disappointed that Lotaria seems to have already made up what she wanted to find in his books and read them solely to find the thing she’s looking for—he prefers for people to find things even he himself didn’t know were in there. Lotaria says that is a passive way of reading, like what her sister Ludmilla does—but Lotaria believes that that there is a better way to read, even for less interesting authors like Silas Flannery, the narrator.
Once again, Lotaria represents a certain school of academic reading. Her determination to make books fit with her preconceived ideas shows close-mindedness and suggests the limits of taking too academic of an approach to reading. By contrast, Flannery, despite his low critical reputation, is more open to trying to be surprised by the things he reads.
Themes
That evening, the narrator begins to feel that he sees shadowy strangers slipping out of view. He begins to feel that people are messing with his possessions, and when he looks at his manuscripts, he doesn’t remember writing them.
This passage seems to offer evidence that Flannery is indeed receiving communications from UFOs—but it’s also possible that he’s just paranoid, like the man who collects kaleidoscopes and lives in constant fear of kidnapping from In a network of lines that intersect (supposedly a novel by Flannery, or possibly Marana’s counterfeit translation).
Themes
The narrator lends some books to Lotaria, but she says she can’t read them because she doesn’t have her computer, which she uses to analyze books and “read” them in five minutes. She finds the most commonly used words in a book, removing common ones like articles, and uses the remaining words to determine what the book is like. She shows the narrator several such word lists.
Lotaria’s method of “reading” is so scientific and abstract that it misses the point. Whereas Ludmilla appreciates the experience of reading, Lotaria wants to reduce reading to a dry exchange of information, like a message that can be decoded.
Themes
The narrator is disturbed to know how Lotaria must be reading his books, and he can’t help thinking of it as he tries to write. Later, the narrator is surprised to meet Ludmilla. Ludmilla gives some strong opinions about the best way to read, and the narrator initially thinks that she’s attacking Lotaria, but in fact, she’s criticizing Ermes Marana. The narrator asks if he’s what Ludmilla expected, and she says yes. She wishes she could watch him in the act of writing.
If Lotaria is Flannery’s idea of a nightmare reader, then it makes sense that Ludmilla, who is opposite of her sister, would be Flannery’s ideal reader. Ludmilla’s criticisms of Marana help Flannery put aside his fears that anything he writes will be mistranslated and misunderstood.
Themes
Ludmilla talks about how she believes the physical act of writing helps get at the truth of literature. The narrator agrees and approaches Ludmilla, attempting to hold her, but she wriggles away and tells him he’s gotten the wrong idea. She says that although she could have sex with him, it wouldn’t bring either of them any closer to the truth of Silas Flannery, as he exists in her mind as the author of his novels.
Although Ludmilla has an understanding with Flannery, as she does with the Reader, Ludmilla stated earlier that she sees herself as firmly on the side of readers, not writers. Writers observe the world, and Flannery seems to be better at observing women at a distance through his spyglass than he is as communicating with them in person.
Themes
After Ludmilla leaves, the narrator goes to his spyglass to see the woman in the deck chair, but she’s not there. Later, during another conversation, the narrator tells Ludmilla about the woman he watches. Ludmilla asks whether the woman looks upset or calm. She concludes that, since the woman always looks calm, she must be reading upsetting books.
Several parts of the novel emphasize how the Reader is similar to the narrators in the stories he reads. But as Ludmilla points out here, reading can also be a way of having experiences different from one’s own, with the woman on the deck chair seemingly feeling calmed by upsetting books. Ludmilla’s words make sense since she is the character who always looks for new experiences when reading.
Themes
Later, the narrator thinks about apocrypha (works that are hidden or falsely attributed) and how he’d like to collaborate with Ermes Marana to make some apocrypha, but he doesn’t know where to find him. Ludmilla will tell the narrator nothing about Marana’s whereabouts—in fact, she’s trying to avoid him.
Flannery tries to put aside his fears about Marana by collaborating with him instead of avoiding him. His willingness to embrace ambiguity and falsehood means that he isn’t as similar to Ludmilla as he thought after all, since Ludmilla likes to believe that what she reads is true.
Themes
The next time that the narrator sees the UFO searchers, he tells them he knows where they can find their extraterrestrial book. He takes them to his spyglass to show them the woman reading in the deck chair. She isn’t there, so instead, the narrator shows them a man reading a book in city clothes who happens to be sitting on a rocky ledge.
After deciding he wants to work with Marana, Flannery begins to embrace his mystical side. He does not know if he’s actually getting messages from extraterrestrials, but he takes the disappearance of the woman on the deck chair and the appearance of the man in city clothes as a sign. This passage explores how both reading and writing involve looking for patterns.
Themes
Later, a Reader visits the narrator and tells him that he has two copies of one of the narrator’s books that look similar on the outside but contain very different novels on the inside. One is about a ringing telephone and the other is about a rich kaleidoscope collector. The Reader is concerned, but the narrator assures him the book is just a fake, so he should forget about it.
Once again, a narrator refers to the Reader in the third-person, rather than in the second-person as “you.” Like Ludmilla, the Reader is concerned about authenticity. Flannery himself had these concerns at the beginning of the chapter, but after considering Marana, he has become more comfortable with ambiguity and falsehoods.
Themes
The Reader is still disappointed about not being able to finish what he was reading, so the narrator tells him that the one fake book he was reading was actually a Japanese novel by Takakumi Ikoka called On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon. As the narrator gives the book to the reader, he seals it in order to conceal the fact that actually it has nothing to do with the novel the reader was describing.
Flannery uses his conversation with the Reader to test out what it would be like to be Marana. By falsely presenting a Japanese novel as the continuation of one of his own books, Flannery makes up his own counterfeit translation. In the real world, Japanese writers were an influence on Calvino, in particular Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.
Themes
The Reader tells the narrator that he knows who’s behind all the fakes: Ermes Marana. The narrator tells the Reader to do something about it himself, and the Reader notes that when he goes on a business trip to South America, he will try to find Marana. The narrator doesn’t mention that Marana is currently in Japan, at least as far as he knows.
The main difference between the Reader and Ludmilla is that, while each wants the truth, Ludmilla tries to find it by avoiding Marana while the Reader wants to find Marana in person, believing that the only way to get to the truth is to confront the counterfeiter rather than avoiding him.
Themes
The narrator describes his idea for a novel made up of just the beginnings of novels, since he feels he always runs out of ideas at a certain point in the middle. The protagonist could be a Reader who keeps getting interrupted, and he imagines other characters like an Other Reader and a fake translator. The narrator decides to send the Reader away, reading a copy of On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon, so that the narrator can have some time alone with the Other Reader. Perhaps to make the Reader less lonely, the narrator will give the Other Reader a sister.
Flannery’s idea for a novel is nearly identical to Calvino’s own. This recalls Flannery’s earlier musings about how a tormented author and a productive author might somehow arrive at the same manuscript. It also recalls a famous short story by Jorge Borges (“Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”) that similarly explored the idea of how two very different authors could arrive at the same book. In fact, in this passage Flannery seems to have a godlike power to manipulate his own world and send the Reader away, further blurring the line between character and author.
Themes
