Category Archives: Reading

Word Book World Back

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Francois Lachance

It was originally published under the title Triton. Wesleyan University Press reissued it under the title Trouble on Triton with a forward by Kathy Acker who introduces the reader to the intricacies of Samuel Delany’s prose by way of an … Continue reading →

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Pumped

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Francois Lachance

In the perspective of an admitted “catharsis addict”. Dirt is liquid. And writing and reading are a conduit for bodily fluids. A book, like a TV, drains me of my wishes and fears. I hook myself up to the book … Continue reading →

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Good Readers As Attuned Receptors

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Francois Lachance

My copy of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs contains a book marker from The Bob Miller Bookroom which discretely below an engraving of a floral specimen displays a quotation from Emerson: “‘Tis the … Continue reading →

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Plastic Figures

Posted on October 31, 2009 by Francois Lachance

When I first encountered this essay in Open Letter I was stymied. It began with a long footnote on Eric Auerbach and his essay “Figura”. It is when I encountered the essay again in Nilling that I was at ease … Continue reading →

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Field

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Francois Lachance

Johanna Drucker in Poetry Plastique curated by Jay Sanders and Charles Bernstein. Any textual artifact is a contingently configured field of potential, capable of producing a reading. To which I would like to add: Every reading is a text. Of … Continue reading →

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The Age of Reading

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Francois Lachance

I love the ecological turn of mind. And in the recapitulation the earthworms are left behind. And in so being taken on an aura of their own. A nonmaterial definition of the book comes hand in hand, it seems to … Continue reading →

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Order of Words

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Francois Lachance

Northrop Frye on what we do when we read in a certain way… Everyone who has seriously studied literature knows that he is not simply moving from poem to poem, or from one aesthetic experience to another: he is also … Continue reading →

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Out Bound

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Francois Lachance

In French one observes the link between to read (“lire”) and to bind (“lier”). Spellbinding. Leads one to ponder the etymology of “read”. And of course how one’s experience with the act of reading may be conditioned by one’s participation … Continue reading →

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Copy, Paste, Paste

Posted on July 19, 2009 by Francois Lachance

From HyperMnemonics – MetaMimetics some thoughts about the features of the text editor software Emacs. One of the joys of working with Emacs is the buffer. The user can select and paste from many blocks of copied or cut text. … Continue reading →

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Picture Exact Description

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Francois Lachance

Steve McCaffery “Tenderizing Buttons” Open Letter Second Series. No. 6 (Fall 1973) p. 101 – – – – The subject is Gertrude Stein or more specifically her writing and the flow is sometimes broken by spacing and other times by … Continue reading →

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