At such an early point in Calvino's book, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I can confidently say that I like his writing style. There aren't many authors who can pull off addressing the audience quite like he does. Having said that, I don't always find myself agreeing with his statements. I get that he's exaggerating a lot, like when he says you'd want to throw the book out the window if it repeated a page, but I can't remember a single time when I've ever thought of throwing a book out the window, let alone in the trash. I'm a bit of a horder--that is, I don't like to give my stuff up, which explains why I'm not keen on using the library much. I like to keep my books around, even if I've already read them once. And, instead of throwing a book in the trash, I'd be more inclined to donate it to Goodwill, or resell it on half.com. But this is kinda off topic, so let's get back to the book, shall we?
Wait a minute! Look at the page number. Damn! From page 32 you've gone back to page 17! What you thought was a stylistic subtlety on the author's part is simply a printers' mistake: they have inserted the same page twice.
--Calvino 25
The beginning of chapter 2 made me think back to a couple of things:
First: I thought about our recent discussion concerning erratas in printed documents. I guess it's a bit of a sore spot for me, since I couldn't even find the word on the page when I was asked to explain it's meaning. Anyways, I feel like the erratas mentioned in Writing Material were miniscule compared to this type of errata. Who prints the same page twice? While I've been fortunate enough to never come across such an atrocity, I can say that even the slightest typo--such as writing "the the" drives me up a wall. I'm not saying I'd take Calvino's suggestion and throw the book out the window, but I would definitely be making a trip back to the bookstore to complain.
Second: Before Calvino revealed that the reason the text looked so familiar was because of the reprinted page, I found myself thinking back to 9th grade, when my Honors English class had to read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I'm going to be honest right now and admit that I didn't read the whole thing. One of the things Dickens was famous for in that book (aside from the best opening and closing lines ever--in my opinion) was the fact that he repeated the same details over and over again, which made for a very monotonous reading experience. I get that he was paid per word back then, so it only made sense to write an incredible abundance of words, but seriously? I'm pretty sure Dickens could've shortened that book to about half its size and it still would've been successful. Sometimes I wish I had the time to reread it (well, read it for real this time), but I don't as of right now...
Back to Calvino. As I said earlier, I haven't developed much of an opinion concerning his book, but I like his writing style. And, I like the fact that he's making me think and reflect so early on in the book. I hope this continues.
You make a good point about Calvino's use of exaggeration, Jessie. And I would be right there with you in the bookstore if I found out that a major printing mistake had been made like the one Calvino jokes about in the quote above. When Calvino wrote that he also explained a bit of the process (past process?) of book printing and binding, making me think that such a mistake could really happen. But maybe not. After all, I'm pretty sure it's all computerized these days and robo-printers probably rarely make such mistakes without major coding problems or legitimate pranks. Anyways, you did a great job of tying in Dickens' work with Calvino. Can you only imagine if a bit of Dickens' work was mixed up with Calvino's? That would be an apt display of what I think is happening in the book right now!