Reading very hard

"Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and glamour of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.

[...]

Many who have 'plied their book diligently,' and know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life."

- Robert Louis Stevenson, An Apology for Idlers

I am trying not to read too hard. As February thaws out, I am trying to move more slowly, be less "stockish" (what does that mean?), let more bustle into my life.

First step: changing my morning routine. Usually monopolized by headlines (Le Monde, New York Times, Libération, L'humanité), rarely by the actual content of articles, my mornings are undergoing an overhaul, inspired by Günter Grass:

"Between nine and ten o’clock I have a long breakfast with reading and music."

(courtesy of Daily Routines)

Reading a few pages, with tea, is more efficient in waking me up to the day than a frantic search across news websites that basically only ensure to me that the world has not blown up, but has maintained a certain status quo of ignominy and suffering.

Différance

"I don't want to read. I don't want to write. I don't want to do anything but be here. Doing something will take away from being here. I want to make being here enough. Maybe it's already enough. I won't have to invent enough. I'll be here and I won't do anything and this place will be here, but I won't do anything to it. I'll just let it be here. And maybe because I'm here and because the me in what's here makes what's here different, maybe that will be enough, maybe that will be what I'm after. But I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'll be able to perceive the difference. How will I perceive it? I need to find a way to make myself absolutely not here but still be able to be here to know the difference. I need to experience the difference between being here and not changing here, and being here and changing here.

I set up camp early for the night. It's a beautiful, unlikely evening after a long rainy day. I put my tent down in an El Greco landscape: the velvet greens, the mottled purples, the rocky stubble.

But El Greco changes here, he makes being here not enough. I am here and I can't be here without El Greco. I just can't leave here alone."

Roni Horn, "Making Being Here Enough"

Geologie Poésie

"Lorsque nous arriverons au degré de science qui nous permettra de faire une histoire naturelle des coeurs, de les nommer, de les classer en genres, en sous-genres, en familles, en crustacés, en fossiles, en sauriens, en microscopiques, en... que sais-je? alors, mon bon ami, ce sera chose prouvée qu'il en existe de tendres, de délicats, comme des fleurs, et qui doivent se briser comme elles par de légers froissements auxquels certains coeurs minéraux ne sont même pas sensibles.

- Oh ! de grâce, épargne-moi ta préface, dit Émile d'un air moitié piteux, en prenant la main de Raphaël."


(Balzac, La Peau de chagrin)

Superhero II

To add to the previous list:

Madame Bovary...Carrie Bradshaw


Read that one however you like. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Limerick

I commissionned this from my mother.

There once was a girl with a list

The reading of which was the pits

The French list was long

Like a bad country song

'Twas Derrida so sorely she missed

...which we then ran through Google translator...

Il était une fois une fille avec une liste

dont la lecture était le puits

la liste française a longtemps été

comme un chant de mauvais pays

TWAS Derrida si durement qu'elle a raté

Laughing. Really hard.

Ok, back to my Friday night date with Madame Bovary.

Superhero

Looking for help reading.

When it gets especially difficult reading X, I pick up Y.

X...Y
La Quête du Graal...Heidi Klum
Les Lettres Persanes...Christine de Pizan
François Villon...Buffy

So, "pick up" is maybe not always exactly appropriate...

It's not that I don't like X. In fact, La Quête du Graal is one of my favorites so far on the List, and François Villon fits particularly well with the melancholy November falling in.

Ys* however, have in common (and just now realizing this) is the kind of badass, strong lady figure Heidi, Christine, and Ms. Summers represent. If this Y-recourse pattern continues, maybe some sort of amalgamated literary superheroine will arise. Reading List Succor.

*also Ys, Joanna Newsom's album, which I'll keep in mind for the next time I need help. Which would be somewhat contemporaneous with the Medieval section I'm finishing up.

Apprendre à lire enfin II

I miss philosophy in general this year, and Derrida in particular.

Chaque livre est une pédagogie destinée à former son lecteur. Les productions de masse qui inondent la presse et l’édition ne forment pas les lecteurs, elles supposent de façon fantasmatique et primaire un lecteur déjà programmé. Si bien qu’elles finissent par formater ce destinataire médiocre qu’elles ont d’avance postulé. Or, par souci de fidélité, comme vous dites, au moment de laisser une trace, je ne peux que la rendre disponible pour quiconque : je ne peux même pas l’adresser singulièrement à quelqu’un. Chaque fois, si fidèle qu’on veuille être, on est en train de trahir la singularité de l’autre à qui l’on s’adresse. A fortiori quand on écrit des livres d’une grande généralité : on ne sait pas à qui on parle, on invente et crée des silhouettes, mais au fond cela ne nous appartient plus. Oraux ou écrits, tous ces gestes nous quittent, ils se mettent à agir indépendamment de nous. Comme des machines, au mieux comme des marionnettes (je m’en explique dans Papier Machine). Au moment où je laisse (publier) « mon » livre (personne ne m’y oblige), je deviens, apparaissant-disparaissant, comme ce spectre inéducable qui n’aura jamais appris à vivre. La trace que je laisse me signifie à la fois ma mort, à venir ou déjà advenue, et l’espérance qu’elle me survive. Ce n’est pas une ambition d’immortalité, c’est structurel. Je laisse là un bout de papier, je pars, je meurs : impossible de sortir de cette structure, elle est la forme constante de ma vie.
Jacques Derrida, "Apprendre à vivre enfin" (Galilée, 2005)

Cited on remue.net

Beyond the initial commonplace of an "educable" reader, reading becomes invested with the power to bring back the dead. Once thus present before the resuscitated work (and, Derrida leads us to imagine, the ghost of the writer), the reader is able in turn to be "formed," shaped and taught, by the spectral presence that has been conjured.

A reminder that we are dealing with live things. Live, or "mort-vivant," back from the grave. And wanting your brain.

Okay, enough with the zombie references. It's too close to Halloween!