Ever since a young child, I have loved reading and would define myself as a homotextual. That is to say, someone who derives their primary pleasure from books, not from people, and accepts that reading in what Barthes terms a living sense (i.e. homogeneous with a virtual writing) is always perverse in nature and immoral in character.
I remember at primary school we had to line up and slowly make our way towards the teacher's desk, book in hand. The splendidly named Mrs Horncastle would ask each pupil in turn what page they were on and then request that they read a short paragraph to her.
She was, I suppose, a good woman attempting to be a good teacher. But I fear she understood only dead readings in which the printed word was recognised and mechanically repeated, but failed to produce an inner text or deterritorialize the subject. Her concern was with improving comprehension, not intensifying pleasure or bringing children's relationship with language to a crisis of some kind.
Once, the line moved so slowly that I finished reading the Ladybird Book I'd been assigned before I'd reached the front of the class. And so, when asked: 'What page are you on Stephen?' I placed the closed work onto her desk and replied proudly: 'I've read it Miss!' in anticipation of praise and a possible gold star.
Maybe she didn't believe me - or maybe she wanted to punish what she regarded as impudence - but I was unjustly sent to the back of the line and told to begin the book again from page one. This taught me an important early lesson about the exercise of authority and that within a culture of institutionalised stupidity, it doesn't pay to be too clever ...
I remember at primary school we had to line up and slowly make our way towards the teacher's desk, book in hand. The splendidly named Mrs Horncastle would ask each pupil in turn what page they were on and then request that they read a short paragraph to her.
She was, I suppose, a good woman attempting to be a good teacher. But I fear she understood only dead readings in which the printed word was recognised and mechanically repeated, but failed to produce an inner text or deterritorialize the subject. Her concern was with improving comprehension, not intensifying pleasure or bringing children's relationship with language to a crisis of some kind.
Once, the line moved so slowly that I finished reading the Ladybird Book I'd been assigned before I'd reached the front of the class. And so, when asked: 'What page are you on Stephen?' I placed the closed work onto her desk and replied proudly: 'I've read it Miss!' in anticipation of praise and a possible gold star.
Maybe she didn't believe me - or maybe she wanted to punish what she regarded as impudence - but I was unjustly sent to the back of the line and told to begin the book again from page one. This taught me an important early lesson about the exercise of authority and that within a culture of institutionalised stupidity, it doesn't pay to be too clever ...
