Reading seems like a solitary activity. We mostly read in silence, often on our phones. We sometimes tell others what we are reading or have recently read, but mostly don’t. We read in private, alone, but also on public transit or in waiting rooms where the act of reading insulates and isolates us from the strangers nearby. Sometimes even amongst friends, talking about something or nothing particular, we’ll mentally flit away and worry about some plot point or argumentative turn in the book we’d been reading that morning. It is, then, not for nothing that a good number of authors - Edith Wharton, Ingeborg Bachmann, Aldous Huxley, Germaine Greer - call reading a vice. It is seen as a self-indulgent and potentially damaging pursuit of pleasure. It is cast as an irresponsible act of sequestering oneself from the world and everyone in it.
The painters agree. Depictions of reading not only skew towards solitary figures, but also suggest that reading forces folks further into themselves. The posture of the reader involves some kind of self-touching - hand on forehead, crossed legs - that re-affirms that one has only oneself when reading.
Reading, alternately, is presented as something that an individual figure indulges in like a hot bath. They recline, chill. It’s a mood, a vibe. The outward pressures of the un-booked world and all its fleshy people do not figure here. Reading neighbors on sleep - another solitary vice. It’s a quiet, unproductive luxury.
Less interested in depicting the mere figures of literal readers, you can also find painters presenting reading’s figurative effects. Reading is, in many ways, an act of cancelling oneself out. When you read, you are substituting someone else’s words and sentences for your own internal monologue. If your thoughts come into the act of reading, then you aren’t really reading anymore. To read is to take a sojourn from selfhood.
Less dramatically, reading is an act of entertaining a dialogue with oneself or a version of oneself. We read and then consider ourselves in relation to what we’ve read. Our thoughts, in some cases, might be divided. We might agree and disagree with a character’s actions or a writer’s ideas. We might be simultaneously sympathetic and suspicious of some depicted feeling or represented attitude. It is still, of course, solitary - but it isn’t exactly singular. The process of reading might reveal multiple varieties of you to you. It might serve like a strange mirror, a way of seeing oneself at unexpected angles or in an unusual light.
As beautiful and evocative and interesting as all this stuff about solitary readers is, it’s all wrong. Reading is never solitary. It can’t be. It looks solitary, sure. It might even feel solitary, but it’s not.
Reading is, first, a meeting between reader and writer. It takes at least two. On the page - digital or otherwise - a reader encounters someone other than themselves. It’s not a dialogue, but it is a conversation.
Reading also involves more than just the reader and the writer. It involves all the people-type figures who show up on the page. The fictional characters, historical personages, public figures, toads of toad hall, whos of whoville, and so on who serve as the subjects of sentences or movers of plot.
These people are often from places other than the place you call home - but, regardless of geography, you each share the page.
These people are also often from times other than your own - but, regardless of chronology, you each share the page.
And more than the writer and all the figures they might write about, you are also reading alongside all the other readers. You are with and beside all the other readers of the thing you are reading. You, like all those other readers, are following one word to the next, making the same semantic connections. You are doing similar mental choreography as many others, moving along the page and across the words. You are occupying a similar position as others even if your particular thoughts and attitudes and beliefs and features differ from others incredibly. You are part of a great community of people who have each and all decided to step to oneside of their own immediate, lived experiences in favor of the mediated, lived experiences of others.
Reading cannot be a solitary act and, more importantly, it cannot be a selfish one. You cannot get anything out of a sentence or a paragraph or an essay or a book that wasn’t freely given by someone else. You can take and take and take as much or as little as you want. Your taking is part of the whole thing. You are momentarily perfecting a process begun by someone else, someone you have never and will never and even can never meet anywhere other than through words. You are doing that. You specifically. Right now. Hi.
We’ve been writing this strange newsletter for exactly one month now and, for exactly one month now, we have held off on gushing about how much we appreciate you. We’re incredibly grateful for you, so we wanted to let you know that. We also wanted to let you know about the community you are in. It may seem, as you read this post, that you are engaged in something solitary, but - like you read above - you’re not.
You - whether you are in the Dominican Republic, Norway, Colombia, Ireland, Viet Nam, the Philippines, the US, Portugal, Kenya, the UK, Mexico, Sudan, Germany, New Zealand, India, Spain, Indonesia, Belgium, Australia, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Italy, South Africa, France, or Canada - are deciding (for reasons we do not understand and do not need to understand) to spend your time with us as we say ridiculous things about the city we occupy and the “culture” we come across. You are also, in a very ethereal type of way, spending time alongside a lot of other people who have made the same (questionable) decision. It’s very humbling.
Some of you have mentioned Ooof! Bong! on your own SubStack or have forwarded an essay over to someone you know. This is amazing. Not because we want more subscribers or whatever. Those numbers feed only the vainest part of ourselves and we wish that part would shrivel up and die already. We love, instead, seeing something shared because it means that you are finding cause to connect with other folks. We’re just happy to be involved in that process. Or, rather, we’re happy that some topic or idea or picture or whatever has inspired you to make a connection of some kind with someone. So, please, if something seems interesting - share it with others. Do it for you and them. You can even leave us out of it if you’re skeptical of our motives. Just print the pdf and email it. Or screenshot the part you care about and forward it along. We do not care about us (which, writing it out now, might be a problem?) - but rather about the circulation of ideas, bad photographs, good art, sardonic jokes, political mischief, Montreal-based observations, and other serious matters of concern.
OK. Lastly, if you write stuff - please share it. We know it’s painful to do so. We have genuinely not shared this thing with the majority of people we know. We likely won’t ever share it with them. But don’t be like us! Share your stuff! Self-promote! Be shameless! If not for your own sake, do it for us. We would much rather be readers than writers. It would make our day/week/month/life to read your stuff. Please add a link in the comments (if you feel inclined to share publicly) or send it to us via email (ooofbong at gmail dot com). And if you don’t write, maybe try writing? We’d love to read whatever you write. We’d especially love to read it if you write about the place you live. That’s kind of something we’re really into.
Thank you for this month. Really. It’s so nice spending time with you and weird and stressful in only the best ways.
P.S. To those of you who read our stuff regularly but don’t subscribe - we also think you’re great. We don’t understand exactly why you’re very protective about your email, but we dig it. Keep typing in that web address. Do what you’ve got to do. We’ll be here.
P.P.S. To those of you who have never read Ooof! Bong! before this post - welcome! Read posts other than this one to get a sense of what’s up. Subscribe! Don’t subscribe! We’d be delighted by the former and totally accepting of the latter. Read our stuff, though, and share it with folks! We really like that. That’s really cool.
P.P.P.S. If you’re in Beijing some time between right now and May 3rd, can you check out Liu Xiaohui’s solo exhibition for us? We’re obsessed and far away.
P.P.P.P.S. Life stuff has rendered our writing schedule deranged for a couple days, so these posts are going out late and are way more chaotic than we’d like. It’ll all settle down soon enough and we’ll be back to whatever it is we do exactly? Parochial cultural commentary? Narcissism but with words? Naive optimism under the guise of cool cynicism? Stay tuned to find out.
Life is about interactive learning and learning is most effectively done through reading and of course writing. So get reading and writing everybody!
Reading is a temporary "filler" for me... I've been to 61 countries so far and reading allows me to visit the remaining 135 - whether it be via fiction or non-fiction. I've also lived for a quarter century so far and reading will take me through eons more and very likely to the end of time itself. Reading is my Boat of a Million Years (Poul Anderson).