How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
In a deck chair, on the terrace of a chalet in the valley, there is a young woman reading. Every day, before starting work, I pause a moment to look at her with the spyglass. In this thin, transparent air I feel able to perceive in her unmoving form the signs of that invisible movement that reading is, the flow of gaze and breath, but, even more, the journey of the words through the person […] that journey that seems uniform and on the contrary is always shifting and uneven. (15.1)
By watching the woman through his spyglass, Flannery is basically doing the same thing that you're doing with Ludmilla throughout this book: turning a woman into an object and fantasizing about how you'll be able to fulfill your frustrated desires by owning her. Great!
Notice, though, that Flannery's gaze is completely one-way. The woman likely doesn't know she's being watched—and that's actually part of the reason Flannery watches her. He wants to see her natural reactions to the book she's reading so he can try to write something that can give her the same pleasure. But what goes missing in all of this is the fact that Flannery's acting like a creep. In this sense, it can sometimes be hard to tell if Calvino is actually poking fun at Flannery's peeping-Tom habit or actually celebrating it as a metaphor for the tortured writer.
Quote #8
Reader, what are you doing? Aren't you going to resist? Aren't you going to escape? Ah, you are participating.... Ah, you fling yourself into it, too.... You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters? Like this, without any preparation..? Wasn't your story with Ludmilla enough to give the plot the warmth and grace of a love story? (17.77)
Finally, the book seems to call you (and itself) out on all the sex that's been going on. The narrator literally asks you "how much is enough?" The moot answer might be that just as there is never an end to reading, there is never an end to this kind of sexual appetite (at least for men). That said, Calvino might also, for the first time, be offering you the possibility of sexual restraint.
Quote #9
"You're hurting me," Amaranta says as I press her whole body against the sacks and feel the tips of her budding breasts and the wriggle of her belly.
"Swine! Animal! This is why you've come to Oquedal! Your father's son, all right!' Anacleta's voice thunders in my ears, and her hands have seized me by the hair and slam me against the columns." (18.47-18.48)
In the second-to-last of Calvino's fictional novels, the pursuit of women reaches its most aggressive level as Nacho tries to force himself on Amaranta, a young girl who might be his sister. As if this scene weren't enough, Nacho tries the exact same thing only a few pages later with another young girl named Jacinta, who might also be his sister. Blah.
Male sexual aggression toward women is a part of this book from its earliest stages, and it reaches an almost absurd level in this later novel. But in these scenes, it still isn't clear if Calvino is using Nacho to criticize the expectations of an average male reader or simply catering to these expectations when it comes to sex and women. Maybe Calvino thinks that if he gives you enough sex, you'll go along with his more challenging points about the reading process. It's best to hope not, but it's uncomfortably vague at moments like this.