Reading (&) the Body
Courtesy of Penelope Illustration
I’m re-reading a little Peter Brooks in column A and in column B thinking a lot about reading and the body, reading as consumption, reading while eating, reading while shitting, reading while smoking, the frenetic idleness of reading finding its counterpoint in various bodily acts/needs/processes.
From Brooks’s Reading for the Plot:
Speaking reductively, without nuance, one might say that on the one hand narrative tends toward a thematics of the desired, potentially possessable body, and on the other toward a readerly experience of consuming, a having that, in an era of triumphant capitalism, is bound to take on commercial forms, giving to the commerce in narrative understandings a specifically commercial tinge.
What do you do when you read? Or do you just read?
Tags: body, consumption, Peter Brooks, reading, shitting
Smoke cigarettes, sometimes with the tv on mute. Drink a beer and listen to music.
I listen to music when I read and the audio I choose to accompany my reading is necessarily based on the mood of the writing. There are times when I will listen to Sigur Ros, Hammock, Stars of the Lid, This Will Destroy You and other post-rock/ambient bands (to pair with reading Rhys, Dostoevsky, Proust, etc.) Other times, such as when I read Céline, I opted to listen to Kodan Armada, The Spirit of Versailles, City of Caterpillar, etc.
I am a big practioner of being distracted when I read. Distracted by anyone, anything: a dog barking, a car backfiring, someone typing loudly, someone typing quietly, the hiss a jar makes when it’s opened in the kitchen and I’m in the living room, the sound our cats make coming down the stairs, smells I like, creaking chairs, pennies shifting in my pocket, my back teeth, a sudden realization I’ll be dead before the century has ended, a sense that something is nearby when it isn’t, a childhood memory — like riding my bicycle on concession road 19, of seeing up Heather J.’s skirt in summertime — fears, various fears, all the fears, anything, what was I reading? I’ll start again. At the top of the page. Hello, same page, sing to me, anew.
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I hate it when I take out a book from the library and it’s covered in food stains.
if anything, smoke
Sigur Ros is definitely good for reading. I’ve tried listening to eminem or other artists that focus on vocals and it gets too distracting.
Smoke cigarettes, sometimes with the tv on mute. Drink a beer and listen to music.
Like the Brooks quote. One of the things that stuck with me from Reading for the Plot is the idea that the desire to finish a book, central to the desire of plot, is the desire for death. A little overly psychoanalytic, maybe, but we want to finish, to kill, the thing that is giving us joy. All joy works like this, to some degree. We want it to last forever and yet we’re constantly working to drive it to its end.
I don’t honestly remember where I was going with this. It’s like, one forty-something.
I listen to music when I read and the audio I choose to accompany my reading is necessarily based on the mood of the writing. There are times when I will listen to Sigur Ros, Hammock, Stars of the Lid, This Will Destroy You and other post-rock/ambient bands (to pair with reading Rhys, Dostoevsky, Proust, etc.) Other times, such as when I read Céline, I opted to listen to Kodan Armada, The Spirit of Versailles, City of Caterpillar, etc.
I hate it when I take out a book from the library and it’s covered in food stains.
if anything, smoke
I think more likely is the fact that no joy lasts forever, and so consuming it, though killing it in the process, is our only way of experiencing it. I think.
Favorite way to read is right away in the morning, after I have a bagel and take my medicine. I sit down with a huge mug of stomach-friendly coffee, play the Yanqui UXO album from GY!BE lightly through my headphones, and I read for 2-3 hours in a state of near-total bliss. . .
Sigur Ros is definitely good for reading. I’ve tried listening to eminem or other artists that focus on vocals and it gets too distracting.
Like the Brooks quote. One of the things that stuck with me from Reading for the Plot is the idea that the desire to finish a book, central to the desire of plot, is the desire for death. A little overly psychoanalytic, maybe, but we want to finish, to kill, the thing that is giving us joy. All joy works like this, to some degree. We want it to last forever and yet we’re constantly working to drive it to its end.
I don’t honestly remember where I was going with this. It’s like, one forty-something.
[…] HTMLGIANT / Reading (&) the Body […]
I think more likely is the fact that no joy lasts forever, and so consuming it, though killing it in the process, is our only way of experiencing it. I think.
Favorite way to read is right away in the morning, after I have a bagel and take my medicine. I sit down with a huge mug of stomach-friendly coffee, play the Yanqui UXO album from GY!BE lightly through my headphones, and I read for 2-3 hours in a state of near-total bliss. . .
[…] HTMLGIANT / Reading (&) the Body […]
[…] HTMLGIANT / Reading (&) the Body […]
Maybe Bolaño’s 2666 is in part responding to this…I’m trying to get through the Part about the Crimes. It feels like I’m in some kind of purgatory and that perhaps I’ll be suddenly reborn at the end of the section. Not incidentally, the litany of deaths it depicts is itself numbing. To have a reawakened capacity to feel for these dead, then, would coincide with the reader’s reemergence or rebirth. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
Maybe Bolaño’s 2666 is in part responding to this…I’m trying to get through the Part about the Crimes. It feels like I’m in some kind of purgatory and that perhaps I’ll be suddenly reborn at the end of the section. Not incidentally, the litany of deaths it depicts is itself numbing. To have a reawakened capacity to feel for these dead, then, would coincide with the reader’s reemergence or rebirth. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
I love listening to Sigur Ros when I’m reading anything. I also love Explosions in the Sky. Also Dave Brubeck.
I love listening to Sigur Ros when I’m reading anything. I also love Explosions in the Sky. Also Dave Brubeck.