Reading S. King's "Breathing Method"
This is based on my missing lecture about some ways to read. Comments are
welcome.
Please send them to KAGAN@lemoyne.edu
Enjoy first.
Talked about how we used to listen to records. Discuss artists'
allusions to other artists. Note how this parallels how some watch and re-watch
video or play and re-play video games.
Layering, multiple levels, and multiple audiences (e.g., Lucy in the Sky,
Stairway to Heaven, American Pie).
Levels in traditional Jewish reading (PaRDeS,
adding/including the level of personal relevance, as indicated in some mystical
readings, as exemplified by Gordon's reading of Ellison's Invisible Man
in "The Body."
Explicitly and implicitly.
Pay attention when the story or work talks about stories and reading and
meaning ("Sometimes words have two meanings." Owen Meany's discussion
of how to read in John Irving's book; Augustine on how to read, etc.).
Pay attention at other times as well.
Titles, names, initials, parallels, front matter, dedications, and afterwords.
Enjoy first.
Breathing Methods
Hard questions about title (s) and teller (s).
Discuss some of the names.
Context in Different Seasons' stories about friendship and stories. (Innocence,
Redemption, Corruption, Evil, death, birth. Direct allusions to external
stories. Discussion of stories' intrinsic value. Parallels to winter tales
including Shakespeare and Christmas story.
Structure. Cameo. Where the stories come from. The danger of being too
critical.
Worlds outside doors. S. King's larger projects. (Include Talisman (with
Straub), Stand, and Dark Tower.
Amiable magic opposed to
cheap magic.
--------------------------------------------------
See Reading Jane Eyre: Reflections on Reading as a Sacred Practice, by Vanessa Zolton.
See Reading for Survival, by by John D. Macdonald
Use methods appropriate to secret writing, if
indicated. [For more information, please see Leo Strauss's Persecution
and the Art of Writing. I also have some notes that may be useful
posted at http://webserver.lemoyne.edu/~kagan/secretw.html.]
Michael Kagan
Le Moyne College
last updated Oct. 13, 2023