Author Exploration

When we began reading Calvino's first chapter of his latest book I have to admit I was delighted to hear something new. The idea of an author talking to his audience made the book feel personal and relatable. Yet as the chapter countied with Calvino's speech about choosing the proper book, naming the categories of books I would not read and carrying on, I liked the author less and less. I had the opposite effect when reading Storytown. Originally, I thought the plot was random and nothing was being told so I had to assume it for myself, which wasn't the style of reading I'm most accustom to. As Storytown continued I found that I looked at the importance of each sentence and what it was showing to me so that I could figure out what wasn't being told. Though this process was actually more interesting than I had initially thought it would be. Unlike Calvino, Daitch was making me interact with the characters rather than telling me how I should.
After our class discussion on Storytown, I learned a few things that I need to pay attention to that I haven't in the past. First of all, when I was reading the story I on own I didn't catch on to the fact that Alice described her co-workers by their characters, rather than by given name. Phil brought up this point in class, and made me realize that each of the characters in the story were similar to their given characters at Storytown. The intertexuality of the character Alice and the story of Alice in Wonderland showed me the similarities between Alice in Storytown and the book Alice in Wonderland. Both characters are bored with their world, so they escape through a fantasy or in Alice of Storytown's case, through her job. Both girls also go with the flow and allow themselves to be sweep away proving their neither is very self-motivated. My favorite line of this story was on pg. 191 when they describe the author by saying "coincidences mattered to him, as if there might be no other reasonable motive for giving someone a job". This quote lead me to believe that Alice and her co-workers may be seen by the outside world as the same as their given characters. All in all, I think that just my in depth thought and preoccupation with this idea proves how Daitch made me as a reader become invested in her plot. For this reason, I think layers of the story like hiding meaning, interesting characters, and underlying morals make a story meaningful, which is why an author should give extra attention to those principles to attract a reader.