Ecos Stopwatch and Narrative Time in Puig, Jean-Renaud Camus, and Calvino

While a number of theorists have investigated the various facets of narrative time and tempo, few appear to have done so within the context of reader-response theory and criticism. The third of six lectures that Umberto Eco gave at Harvard University in the winter of 1992–93 focused on how an author can shape time and thus influence the readerʹs pace through the narrative. This article uses Ecoʹs tool of exploration—the narrative stopwatch—to measure the narrative tempi in three novels by three late twentieth-century authors, Manuel Puig, Jean-Renaud Camus, and Italo Calvino, showing how each author influences the pace of the reader.