Almost as soon as I finished writing the post dated 5th January 2011 about reading I deviated from that plan. It was akin to an aspirational attitude of constant but essentially pointless acquisition of riches. I remembered Franny...
A beautiful and endless question...
N.B. I stand by the questions posed in post 5 Jan, just not by the method of answering them.
What happened was, I got the idea in my head – and I could not get it out – that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. what’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping – and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge – when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake, anyway – is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly...I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while – just once in a while – there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!’
(J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey)
I remember Deleuze and Guattari, I looked at the trees outside and everyone around me and thought, duh!? What about a rhizomatic mode of knowledge and life? The reason I started writing more in the past few years is because I removed all barriers and plans. What emerged instead was some sort of natural rhythm, albeit a combination of bullying myself (come on write something you good-for-nothing nobody) and blind, happy desire. Why could the same non-plan not apply to reading?
What seems to be working for me is responding once again (like I did when I was a child) to urgency, passion, curiosity and chance. I lived and breathed all kinds of books when I was little and when I was satisfied with say, having read thirteen Sweet Valley High books in a row, I’d say to myself, OK I think I’m done with this now, and by the by Francine Pascal isn’t real. I never used to stop myself. I knew when I was small that it was important to give yourself what you want (within reason) as soon as possible. Only when you were sated could you move on to the next thing. This has secretly been the feeling all along, the stupid joy of enjoying reading a book so much that you almost can’t wait for it to be over so you can read the next thing, but at the same time you never want it to stop...
What brought this on was trying to get hold of Moyra Davey's The Problem of Reading which John Waters talks about in Role Models. Anyhow, I haven't been able to find it yet so thought I would try to delineate my own problems with reading. Allowing myself to think it through as a problem has made the confusion/angst a lot more interesting.
I did find this quote from Davey's book, if you're interested:
So how are we to draw up those reading lists finally? I have been fascinated to note how many writers invoke chance and randomness as guiding principles in choosing their books. I am talking about Lynne Sharon Schwartz, who, citing 'the John Cage-ish principle that if randomness determines the universe it might as well determine my reading too,' spent a winter reading the Greek tragedies because she happened to find a discounted set in a mail order catalogue. I'm talking about the serendipitous findings of Virginia Woolf, the little pamphlet from a hundred years ago that she comes across in a second-hand bookshop that stops her in her tracks and rivets her to the spot. I am talking about the happenstance of Georges Perec, who, while engaged in the tedious task of arranging his bookshelves, comes upon a book he'd lost sight of and writes: 'putting off until tomorrow what you won't do today, you finally re-devour [it] lying face down on your bed.' He further speculates that in our pursuit of knowledge, 'order and disorder are in fact the same word, denoting pure chance.' And finally, I am talking about the passionate book collector uncrating his treasures after a two-year hiatus, as portrayed by Walter Benjamin in his autobiographical essay 'Unpacking My Library,' for whom 'chance and fate . . . are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these book.'
A beautiful and endless question...
N.B. I stand by the questions posed in post 5 Jan, just not by the method of answering them.
