本文旨在討論卡爾維諾的《看不見的城市》一書中，作者（卡爾維諾及馬可波羅）如何於書寫中與他們的讀者遊戲。文中由三方面著手：文學的排組遊戲、觀看的角度、及語言的「切確度」，討論作者如何讓其文本呈現多變及不確定。
第一章討論卡爾維諾所提出的「文學的排列組合遊戲」，為後現代情境常面臨的耗竭問題提供一線生機。利用不斷的排列組合規則，作者可將有限的題材重新整理運用、推陳出新，大玩舊瓶裝新酒的遊戲，並推翻讀者希冀獨特且原創的作品的迷思。
第二章討論作者如何於文本中，對自己所採取的觀點角度提出質疑、而後推翻其先前的敘述。繼而討論讀者的視聽，因為受限於作者所呈現的固定觀點、視界，使得接收、閱讀到的訊息產生各異其趣的變化，進而使文本意義多變且不確定。
第三章討論卡爾維諾致力追求但深知不可為的語言「切確度」問題。語言是作者與讀者之間賴以溝通的媒介，但因語言在傳達訊息過程並非想像中般明確、詳實，而往往是傳送出與接收到的訊息間呈現諸多落差、不確定的狀況，所以作者與讀者在借用語言此一工具時，必須切記語言是不可靠的媒介。以此為前提，雖使得寫作與閱讀變得很不確定，但因不定，所以有無限的可能與空間，可供作者嬉戲、游移於詭譎多變的文字間隙中，並利用其不確定性戲耍讀者的認知。

This thesis discusses how the "writers" (Calvino and Marco) play with their readers by making writing something playful and ultimately indeterminate. I look at this from three perspectives: first, from the perspective of Calvino’s literary theory, "combinative aesthetics;" second, from that of the poetics of seeing; then, from the standpoint of Calvino’s strategies of "exactitude."
Chapter One talks about Calvino’s combinative aesthetics in the face of the almost exhausted possibilities of writing something "original" in this postmodern era. By means of his combinatorial play, a finite number of objects (or elements) can generate an indefinitely large (if not next to infinite) diversity of possibilities.
Chapter Two focuses on the writer's poetics of seeing. Though aiming to make the reader see what he has seen, the writer's seeing is, nevertheless, unavoidably distorted and influenced by some subjective and objective variables. Through the writer's consciousness of limitless viewpoints in seeing and problematization of his partial angles in observing, the reader encounters an unstable and unreliable narrative.
Chapter Three discusses the problems confronted when using language as the medium between the writer and reader, according to Calvino's three strategies of "exactitude" through language. Images, signs, and emblems, as they are encoded by language, are too elusive and slippery to transmit definite meanings to the reader. The reader cannot assume that everything the writer says and presents is true, since the writer himself problematizes what he has already written.

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