Bibliomancy: David Shields Says, "Let Me Tell You What Your Book is About"

Bibliomancy collects insights and observations about the reading/writing life and life in the arts generally, words that could aptly describe the reasons Atelier26 exists.

"My impulse is always to push the book toward abstraction,

toward sadness, toward darkness, toward doubleness, toward seventeen types of ambiguity. I always try to read form as content, style as meaning. The book is always, in some sense, stutteringly, about its own language. I'm always framing myself and the author as the lone founts of dark wisdom; I'm always the exponent of airy despair; I never touch ground. Metaphysical is big. In my formulation, the subject of the book is never what it appears to be. I frequently say that the book is seen to be about X when really it's about Y. I always read the book as an allegory, as a disguised philosophical argument. Existence is frequently mentioned, as are human, animal, sex, fuck, and violence. I love the words powerfully and enormously and relentlessly and bottomlessly. I use investigation and exploration and excavation and examination and rigorous over and over. What would I do without mediation? There's always an implied love story between me and the writer -- me loving the book, loving the writer. Candor is key -- being willing to say what no one else is willing to say. The act of writing is inevitably viewed as an act of courage (brave is all over the place). Life's difficult, maybe even a drag; language is (slim) solace. No one else gets what you're doing; I alone get it. You and me, babe. Intimacy. Urgency. We alone get life. Let me explain your book -- the text -- to yourself. Let me tell you what your book is about. Life is shit. We are shit. This, alone, will save us -- this communication."  

From Reality Hunger by David Shields, section 587

See also: Harold Bloom on Reading as Listening