a blind flaneur

For many years I carried in my head an unfinished project that I called Gutenberg’s Exile. That phrase was shorthand for the complex relationship I have with books and reading. I was cut off from the printed word, expelled from the Gutenberg Revolution. A little twist of fate in my own DNA […]

When I began quoting and commenting on Les Misérables in September — I’ll call it blog-reading — I didn’t know exactly why I was doing it or where it would lead. I needed content to work with to learn the ropes in WordPress. I was experimenting with text editors in pursuit of “pure text” […]

Gustave Courbet. A Young Woman Reading. 1866/1868. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The best reading is forbidden reading, rapt reading, reading with wild abandon until you are done with it, until it has had its way with you. The young woman in Courbet’s painting is reading this way. What could the book be that captures […]