Every choice has an obverse, that is to say a renunciation,” the narrator of “The Castle of Crossed Destinies,” a shapeshifting late novel by Italo Calvino, observes. If this man is right—and he seems wise, if often visited by a strange turbulence—then we are constantly inflicting violence of a metaphysical nature.

We go about our lives smothering possibilities and knifing alternatives, slashing at the fabric of reality itself. By trade, the narrator tells us, he is a fiction writer; he understands what it means to impose his will. One imagines him killing off subpar versions of his characters, littering the forks in his narrative with corpses. His off-kilter energy, which the novel itself shares—is it a shudder of reluctance, or a thrill of pleasure?