For the Love of Literature

‘I believe that the moment I open a book, a connection (however fleeting and paltry) is formed between it and me. This connection is an intangible one that the unseen/unknown author spins across space (reality of the book) and time (eternality of the story) to reach out to me, the contemporary reader. This moment in time is bounded to me – I am the one solid that exists outside of the book, and it is through me that the relationship between it and me is embodied. And this relationship needs passion to sustain itself. There is a quote from Jeanette Winterson on the necessity of passion in forming a relationship with books –

“A reader can fall in love with what is alive through time. Such a book is not an object it is a relationship.” – Art Objects (1995) 

‘It is a love relationship that I form with books (i.e. Winterson’s books). A book is not bounded by the normal limits of time (and space). Its existence continues beyond its author’s. When I form a good relationship with a book – I have fallen in love with it. A relationship with a text is special because it is the closest one can come to forming an equal relationship with anything/one. For one carries forth one’s own baggage – memories, beliefs, traumas and joys – without being judged by the other (the text). Instead, the text offers itself in return. It tells you a story, or draws you (into) a fantasy. Stories of life are immortalized in words – in texts, and when one “falls in love” with a text, the reality of literature becomes the reality of life.’

April 2010

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The passage above is from part of an assignment I did for Philosophy and Literature class (it sounded like a dream module to me) some years back. I was at the peak of my Winterson mania (the first encounter was 20 December 2009, give or take a few days) and the way love works is that it is irrational and unpredictable (what philosophy students strive not to be) – it takes your life down paths you would never have imagined yourself going on otherwise, if not for the love object’s sudden appearance/existence in your life.  

This is partly why I am vaguely uncomfortable with being tasked to write my “reading biography” – it is such a personal and unpredictable undertaking; you never know what might come back at you from the past. (The lengthy chunk at the beginning serves as a stalling measure – of sorts.) However, I do understand the possible merits of such a piece, and I shall begin, but not at the beginning.

The last time I was proud of my reading list (I am not saying I am ashamed at what I am reading now) was earlier this year, when I was working on my dissertation under the tutelage of Dr Tania Roy, a professor whose classes I had been taking since semester one of freshman year (no, I did not stalk her. At least, not initially). From December 2009 to December 2011, I had read everything Jeanette Winterson has written, and was determined to write my thesis on her (works). So I chose the First Encounter (on 20 December 2009; The Stone Gods (2007)) and another text I had liked for its ambiguous lesbian overtones, Written on the Body (1993). Both works marked the overarching theme of my life in the earlier half of this year. That was the beginning of my post-Winterson mania.   

I was reading Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Monique Wittig for research purposes, and also because I liked their language. Roy suggested “why not some Kristeva too” and I obligingly checked out Black Sun from the library. “Tales of Love might be good for you as well...” It seemed a familiar trajectory – back to Freud and Lacan of my psychoanalytic days in her class.

But the slight souring of relations with Winterson came before that, before the Irigaray-Wittig intrusion into our exclusive relationship – for I do agree with her (Winterson) that one can fall in love with a book – if it is at the right time, and the right one (book).

In the period of December 2009 to December 2011, I tried to diversify my reading interests – I read Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Martin Buber and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. My classmate was reading Nietzsche’s The Gay Science and attempting to compare it to The Little Prince. He has always been considered a disruption in class. Fortunately (or unfortunately?) for me, the professor (she was/is not actually a professor yet because she was still working on her PhD at the time) adored Winterson as well and assigned a text of hers for class. Unfortunately for me, my (male) tutor could not empathize with this love of ours and gave me a bad grade for my Winterson-Kierkegaard essay (perhaps it was a wrong move on my part). I got a reprieve (of sorts) when I was sent away on exchange, but in Madison, Wisconsin, I met a lesbian (I was not supposed to let her know I know this) professor who was in love with Winterson as well, and gave me her unrestrained approval to work on a couple of Winterson’s texts for the final paper. Her class was on disability studies, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that queer theory comes under that fairly broad umbrella as well – “queer-ing being a sort of dis-abilizing” she told me. From that point onwards, my academic trajectory would go something like this: disability studies -> gender studies -> race studies -> French feminist theory (plus Winterson), something I am very thankful for, today.

That fall semester in Madison, I had the chance to pursue my greatest love (not including Winterson) – existentialism. Or rather the course name was “French existentialism” (it began and ended with the French, so.) but having Sartre and Camus on the official reading list was exhilarating. I remember I had a running monologue of thoughts alongside the professor’s lectures, and I would dash home after every afternoon class to pen down my reactions – agreements and disapprovals – to what my professor had earlier said. In matters of Literature, I could indulge in my love of Shakespeare (a Shakespeare class was not available in NUS at that point) and was also introduced to the works of Sara Willis and Walt Whitman, which struck a chord in me.

In the years since I have encountered Winterson, I came into contact with a few other writers whose influence came close – but not quite – to hers. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being was the one work which epitomized the notion of a philosophical novel for me. (This was before Sartre’s Nausea, and Camus’s novels.) I also enjoy Tove Jansson’s Moomin series and short story collections. Later on, I discovered Simon Van Booy, whose sparse lyrical prose evoked thoughts and emotions similar to that which Winterson’s writings stirred in me.

But what (who) did I read before her? Italo Calvino, whose Invisible Cities was a strong recommendation by my best friend when we were in secondary school/junior college (unfortunately I only read him later on); J.M. Coetzee, whom I had first encountered in a British literature class, but later on when I grew interested in pursuing the ethical issues surfacing in environmental philosophy class, I picked up his copy of The Lives of Animals, which made me appreciate him more as a thinker; Kazuo Ishiguro is another favourite of mine, especially Never Let Me Go. During the Coetzee-environmental-issues period, I found a wonderful writer who truly touched me with his writings. He was a Catholic priest and also a strong advocate of deep ecology.  I am slightly ashamed to say that what moved me were not so much his ideas but rather his language. I carried The Dream of the Earth with me to and from school (when I had to manually renew it for the n-th time because I could. Not. Bear. To. Part. With. It.). For a couple of months, I toyed with the idea of working on environmental literature/philosophy for my thesis (I have no idea how that would have worked out. If at all). 

That was pre-Winterson.

I am a faithful lover, like her. But unlike her, I realize that the face of love changes as time does its slow, gentle work upon her. My love for/with her works began like the irrational, unfathomable sparks of first love. I felt that I recognized something in her words. Maybe it is this recognition that will always remain, when all else has changed.

Perhaps the beginning of my reading trajectory was already sown with the seeds kick-starting my wanders down existential and lesbian fiction. Like everyone else I began my independent reading life with Enid Blyton (the hardcovers, the boarding school series, The Faraway Tree, The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, the MYSTERIES – OH MY GOD THEY ARE STILL IN MY BOOKCASE, I just had to turn my head to the left and there they are; I haven’t looked at them for a long, long time – I’ve two 3-inch thick MYSTERIES books), Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Babysitters’ Club, Sweet Valley, Fear Street.... But my very very first experience with books were – slightly-larger-than-A4-size hardcovers of folk and fairy tales that my mom would read to me. Two of them are Jack in the Beanstalk and Puss in Boots. I was at that age where I could read alphabets but could not read words (or am I wholly imagining this?), and sometimes when I was waiting for my mom to read me the story, I would grow impatient and make up my own by “reading” the pictures instead of words (because I couldn’t read).

I don’t remember reading the Disney tales with its princesses and happily-ever-afters. But I knew every one of their stories – and was especially delighted when Angela Carter (and sometimes Winterson) re-wrote most of them out of their subservient servile lives. For some reason, through my growing years, I intensely followed series with strong female protagonists – Francine Pascal’s Fearless, Meg Cabot’s (not The Princess Diaries, not really) Mediator and 1800-WHERE-R-U series, this short-lived series featuring a Japanese girl named Heaven... (I cannot remember its actual series title and author.) The girls in these stories all had one thing in common – they knew martial arts and they beat up guys. I LOVE THEM. (Okay, maybe Suze and Jess in Cabot’s series didn’t know how to fight per se... but they had powers that um, the male characters did not have.) They had lots of spunk, coupled with a wicked humour, and my one greatest wish in life at that point was: To be like them and Get into A Fight.

That was when I was in secondary school and following Gaia Moore’s (Fearless) life as closely as though I’d been there beside her, living her life with her. My male classmates refused to succumb to my challenges and one particularly annoying one informed my best friend and I that “the only reason [he] won’t beat [us] up is because” we are girls!

Gaia ruminated a little about existentialism sporadically across the books – I was twelve-and-a-half years old when I first met that term. 

When I was fourteen-going-on-fifteen, two very memorable books dropped by (and have since stayed on in) my life within months of each other. The first was Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli. It was the single most life-changing-affirming-reaffirming book I read that year – and all the years thereafter. Till now? Perhaps. I shall do it for the upcoming assignment. Perhaps. The second was Lucas, by Kevin Brooks. A few pages into the story, I realized I was holding onto a gem, and despite knowing how the story would end, I started tearing before the penultimate episode, and when the finale (with the ending I expected) came, I wanted to close the book, pick it up and begin all over again. Because reading those lines, brought me that much closer into the world Brooks had created, enmeshed me that deeply in the psyche of Caitlin, whose point of view the story is seen through, regarding the sixteen-year-old stranger who passed by their island and set off an inevitable chain of events with one misunderstood kind act – ending in his death by lynching (I haven’t read that book for close to eight years. Its present-ness is fairly disturbing). As though he were a primeval Winterson, I read all of Brook’s works within half a year of encountering Lucas. There was a unifying strand of philosophy present in the YA-themed fictions he wrote – I didn’t know it then, but I know now that that was the spark to the flame. (Plus the fact that my best friend was hiding in the school library during lessons reading Bertrand Russell, and telling me about it during our breaks. She was a Math-Chem-Bio student on her way to biosciences or pharmacy or something-like-that but philosophy sidetracked her life, too. I was studying Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath but the majority of my time was taken up by organic chemistry, differential equations and macroeconomics etc. It must be my literature teacher, who read existential angst in Boey Kim Cheng and casually dropped Kierkegaard upon us.)

I never read Nietzsche (in full), but I wish I did.

On the night of my best friend’s final university exam (literally the FINAL finals), five hours before we had to get on a plane to the destination of our grad trip, I was helping her write her Nietzsche paper.

She had four (or was it five) other philosophy essays overdue; undone.

I wrote her Nietzsche paper for her, reading Nietzsche as I went along – and I WISH I HAD READ NIETZSCHE.

You never know when it might come in useful.

The books arranged on my desk right now are telling: Kristeva Reframed, Theory and Practice, Teaching Literature in Virtual Worlds, Thinking about Literature, Farewell Waltz (Kundera; I still love him), Textual Construction of the Female Body, Hotel World (Ali Smith), The Whole Story and Other Stories (Ali Smith... is one of Winterson’s closest friends), Bodies (Susie Orbach... is Winterson’s partner).  

I am going to read Nietzsche. Though you never fully fall out of love with the first love of your life.  

Oh yes, another text I Love – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. I love Alice... in the way I prefer Puss in Boots to Snow, Ariel or Belle. Incidentally, I recently wrote a play for a friend’s birthday – it featured the Disney princesses and Alice. I haven’t gone into the playwright-incarnation part of me that took place in the year overlapping my first and second years in NUS. But that is a whole other story for another life.

I am going to read Nietzsche.

But first Ali Smith and Susie Orbach... because I’ve outpaced Winterson’s output, and there was that curious time during my thesis writing when I hadn’t been able to fully grasp the amazing (yet absolutely frightening) experience of writing about my favourite author under the supervision of my favourite professor. And I’d still thought I was going to send Winterson my final work.

Reminder to self: I am going to read Nietzsche. You never know when it might come in useful.

“A reader can fall in love with what is alive through time. Such a book is not an object it is a relationship.” – Art Objects (1995)