How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"I make things with books. I make objects. Yes, artworks: statues, pictures, whatever you want to call them. I even had a show. I fix the books with mastic, and they stay as they were. Shut, or open, or else I give them forms, I carve them, I make holes in them. A book is a good material to work with; you can make all sorts of things with it." (13.36)
Irnerio, who's taught himself not to read by reducing language to its basic physical shape, has taken this idea to the next level through his artwork. He uses books to make things like sculptures, and neglects the fact that these books were created for the purposes of reading. There is consistency here between his art and his teaching himself not to read. As you find out later, Calvino takes this absurdity one step further, saying that there is a photographer who has taken pictures of Irnerio's creations and plans on putting them together in—you got it—a book.
Quote #8
"In my case, too, all the books I read are leading to a single book," a fifth reader says, sticking his face out from behind a pile of bound volumes […] "There is a story that for me comes before all other stories and of which all the stories I read seem to carry an echo, immediately lost." (21.10)
The fifth reader at the library suggests that when he reads, there is an ideal book in his mind that sets the bar for his current reading. He doesn't know exactly what this book is because it's actually an ideal book that doesn't (and can't) exist. He has a vague awareness of what it would be like, though, and this is why he can hear an echo of it, just before the echo is lost.
He goes on to add, "'In my readings I do nothing but seek that book read in my childhood'" (21.10). Like Mr. Cavedagna, this reader believes that at some unknown point in the past, he was innocent enough to read a book with no expectations to limit his reading. This half-remembered encounter with the "ideal" story is what feeds his desire to read for the rest of his life.
Quote #9
9. "For me, on the other hand, it is the end that counts," a seventh says, "but the true end, final, concealed in the darkness, the goal to which the book wants to carry you. I also seek openings in readings." (21.12).
Um, what? Let's break this down. The seventh reader who speaks at the library suggests that instead of focusing on a story's opening (like much of Calvino's book does), he feels that it's the end that counts. This is just the kind of claim that you, the normal Reader, can get behind.
But the other reader takes it in a different direction than the one you'd expect, saying that he's not looking for your average ending, but "the true end, final, concealed in the darkness." By this, he could mean the sort of final ending that each book wishes it could give you but can't, since there will always be more books to read.
Or maybe, just maybe, the reader is talking about the ending of reading itself, the end of language, or even the end of the world. Because in the end, why do we all keep talking? It's because we're never able to express something with total perfection; there's always that little bit of a gap (or something like a remainder when you're doing long division) that keeps us going.
Or is this all just a pile of nonsense?