This book is at once very oriented toward literary theory, exploring different conceptions of the relationship between writer and reader, and at the same time dismissive of theorizing. He presents us constantly with theories, shows us a silly reductio ad absurdum, but then shows us that the theory has an underlying truth anyway.
For example, Lotaria proposes a new method of analyzing literature, in which a computer tallies up lists of words, and thus we can decide what an author has decided to focus on without ever having to waste time reading the book. (amusingly enough, I saw a real-life example of this sort of criticism, where the disputants were trying to decide if an author focused on rape in his work, and were reduced to counting the number of times "rape," "raped", etc showed up in the work, using the kindle's ability to count words in a text). It's a silly approach, and yet she in fact manages to capture the flavor of some texts, even as she can't be bothered to engage them on a reading level.
On the other end of the spectrum is Ludmilla, the "Other Reader," for whom the author doesn't exist. Although it seems that she eschews theory, in fact she represents Foucault, for whom the author is not an authoratative source of information about his text. Ludmilla's approach is also silly when taken to its extreme, but she's the one character (other than the Reader) who is willing to completely engage with a text on its own terms.
In addition to his considerations about the relationship of reader/author, Calvino is interested in where the meaning of a text lies. We have characters who invent fake works by real authors, real works by fake authors, and so on, to spread confusion about which texts are real. So what does it mean when the Reader reads two books by Silas Flannery, who may not have written either one? When he feels exposed to some deeper truth, does is matter if the book was actually generated by a computer programmed to ape Flannery's style?
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