Texts and Attitudes, Part 3

Reading and Unriddling the Book

If sometimes the modes of reading—the discovery of new contexts, the breaking apart of old paradigms through the juxtaposition of texts we have grown familiar with and feel as close to our hearts and souls with those that seem to have fallen out of the sky from some distant planet, not to mention word-play turned into multiple layers of allusion and parody, letter manipulation understood as transference of characters and personalities—in brief, a very unorthodox rabbinical style of midrashic commentary.

To make any sense of what I am trying to do, it is important—for me, at any rate—to avoid the jargon terms and the concepts behind them, such as narrative, project, and conversation; instead, the terms I use come out of rabbinics, such as aggadah, midrash, , and mitzvoth.  What I am doing is neither some sort of sociological field investigation or survey, however it may be conceived by the politically correct and the conservatively regress.(Jargon galore!)

By reading, then, I do not mean the simple and passive act of turning marks scratched or printed on paper into words that silently enter the mind and are interpreted as words, sentences, and different kinds of argument.  I take reading, in the etymological series that includes reading, riddling,  and unriddling , to means to interpret, interpolate, expand, enhance and enrich the texts: to see (the size, shape, colour, and arrangement of the letters and words, and so the paragraphs on the page, with all the tension between filled and empty spaces), feel (the texture and weight of the various kinds of paper, parchment, cloth or other substances used to write on) , hear (not just reading aloud, sometimes in a dull steady tone but with rhythms and sound-effects, when called for), taste (you wet your finger to turn the page and so absorb some of the flavours absorbed over the years of its existence) and even smell them (as one does with newly printed books where the ink and glue are not yet completely dry).  I recall when buying my first books as a teenager how certain editions of paperback had a wonderful feel and look to them that changed my way of reading the contents if I then went to an older leather-bound volume or was given a typescript copy. 

Sometimes to force myself to stop racing along a passage and glossing over details, I write out the sentences, speak them aloud, and break up the lines into different lengths, not according to the grammar or syntax, but the sense that I can feel deep inside myself.  Then, also, as I read, I scribble down comments, words as that I have to look up in the dictionary, memories of other books read a long time ago, situations in which the earlier readings occurred, people I once knew and discussed things with.  If I hesitate, make mistakes, change words or punctuation, it is necessary to stop, make a mark in the margin where such a breakdown occurs, and then later return to see if there is any pattern to my resistances, my inner need to transform the text to something my unconsciousness wishes were there.  At times I write down page numbers on the inside covers of the book, so I can come back later to re-read them, to compare them because they at first struck me as odd, unclear, or particularly valuable.

Sometimes I am very lucky when I purchase used books because they come with extra-textual aspects.  A person may have inserted bus tickets, newspaper articles, photographs or letters into the volume to use as page-markers or to associate their own souvenirs with the narrative or description or whatever argument appears.  I take these objects from then on as part of the reading experience.  Or in other volumes the previous owner or owners have put their own ticks and underlinings in, added personal comments in the margin or endpapers, and so enhanced and personalized the book.  One of my friends used to put a date in the margin to signify that he had an idea at that point or, as he explained, to mark the first time so important idea appeared to him.  If an old book once belonged to a library, there are often date stamps, or occasionally names of borrowers scribbled on cards: so I have discovered that for a period of ten years a book was taken out regularly and then there is a gap of twenty or thirty years before the next borrower came along.  Sometimes, picking out a book from my own collection not seen for a while, I see strange lines scribbled over the pages, then realize these are my own squiggles made when I was an infant.  I also enjoy finding Ex Libris seals pasted into books, notices of awards given for special occasions, inscriptions of love and respect from one person to another, addresses written from surprising places.