Three acts of reading

Susan Midalia

Act one: Speed dating for readers 

Sonya
(Admires his clean-cut looks) Lovely to meet you, James. (Clears her throat) I’ve just read a marvellous novel that describes the different moods of the ocean. The changing colours, too, like turquoise and slate. 

James 
(Stares at her juicy lips) Well, I must say that descriptions of the ocean don’t interest me. I’m not inclined to read about seascapes or landscapes, external settings in general. I much prefer to read about the inner life. The irreducible mystery, the ultimate opacity, of consciousness. 

Sonya 
(Bit of a pompous twat) I think we’ve found some common ground, actually. That novel I told you about…it uses descriptions of the ocean to symbolise aspects of the inner life. Our turbulent thoughts. Our desire for serenity. 

James
But that’s such an obvious technique. Surely you can see that. 

Sonya 
(Condescending prick) Doesn’t it depend on the writer’s skill? Symbolism can be subtle, you know. (Pulls back her shoulders).

James 
(Staring at her breasts) Sorry, I didn’t catch what you said. 

Sonya 
(Tight-lipped) That’s because you were staring at my breasts. 

James 
(Indignant) That’s because you thrust them in my face. 

Sonya 
(Smiles) You remind me of the judge in Bertolt Brecht’s play The Caucasian Chalk Circle.  

James
(Startled) What are you on about? 

Sonya
You’re not familiar with Brecht’s play?  

James 
(Checks his watch) You’re digressing. We’re running out of time. 

Sonya
The judge in The Caucasian Chalk Circle dismisses the charge of rape against a man on the grounds that the woman thrust her bum at him. Brecht’s intention was to show the corruption of the justice system. How it serves the interests of the powerful. In this case, men.  

James 
(Wagging a finger) Ah, you’ve just invoked the intentional fallacy. It’s fallacious to believe that we can ever know with any certainty what a writer intended. Modern literary theory argues, correctly, that since authorial intention is irretrievable, meaning is the product of the reader’s interpretation. 

Sonya
Then let me say that I interpret the judge’s judgement ironically. I refuse to perpetuate the misogynistic belief that a woman is to blame for being raped.  

James
Ah, but your reading is merely predicated on what I infer are your feminist beliefs. And who is to say that your values and beliefs, your ideological position, are correct? 

Sonya 
(Sputters) So how do you read the judge’s judgement?  

James
I’m not interested in personal responses. I’m interested in the concept of the reader. The nature of the reading process. These are necessarily abstract matters, are they not? 

Sonya
You just contradicted yourself.  

James
What? How? How did I contradict myself? You clearly misunderstood what— 

Sonya 
(Stands) Time’s up.  

James 
(Stands; stares at Sonya’s breasts) Shall we swap numbers? 

Sonya
(Laughs loudly, walks from the room).

— —

Act two: Reading as subversion 

The lecturer cast his eyes around the room. Nearly a full house today, he thought. Last week’s lecture must have been a success. And not a mobile phone in sight, either. Excellent. His threat to dump each and every visible phone in a bucket of water must have done the trick. 

‘Let’s recap what we’ve learned thus far,’ he said. ‘Remember that we focused on narrative as a form of representation. Put simply: a narrative is not a mirror of life but a version of life, underpinned by particular values and beliefs. In other words, a narrative is an ideological construct. We’re all on the same page?’ 

Some of the students nodded. Others looked a little dazed. Never mind, he thought. Best to push on. 

‘Today I want to discuss the technicalities of narrative perspective,’ he said. ‘Because any reading of a text must consider the nature of its perspective. In other words, we cannot separate the what – the meaning of a text – from the how – how the text is narrated. To put it in philosophical terms: ontology and epistemology are inseparable.’  

General muttering.  

The lecturer coughed. ‘I know this is dry, abstract stuff,’ he said, ‘So let’s get down to specifics. And if you have a question, please raise your hand. Okay. Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start, according to Maria in The Sound of Music.’ 

‘I love that movie,’ a young woman called out.  

Murmurs of sentimental garbage … Hollywood mush … pile of shit. 

‘People, please!’ The lecturer frowned. ‘Now is not the time to be debating the merits of a movie,’ he said. ‘You can do that in your unit on film. Our business here is with words. So let’s return to the words of Maria, “When you read, you begin with ABC”. In narrative terms, let’s begin with the first person in verb conjugations: the “I” person. Now – and this is crucial - we must always consider the reliability of this kind of narrator. All we have are the words of this “I”, but do we agree with them? Can we trust them? Let’s look at an example, shall we?’ 

The lecturer brought up a slide on his PowerPoint, and carefully read out the words: ‘I believe that Australia is in danger of being swamped by Muslims.’ 

He rubbed his hands. ‘Okay, down to business. Notice how this statement sounds emphatic. A strong rhythm, no brooking of doubts. But is the narrator’s belief necessarily true? Is his or her statement reliable?’ 

A hand waved. ‘Those are Pauline Hanson’s words,’ said a young man with gleaming hair. ‘And she’s entitled to say whatever she likes. It’s called freedom of speech.’ 

‘It’s called being a racist,’ said the Sound-of-Music young woman. 

The lecturer held up his hand. ‘We are not here to debate the ethics of a real person,’ he said. ‘We are here to read this statement, and this statement only, as an example of first-person narration. Now. What difference might it make if the statement had begun with “I think”? Doesn’t that sound less forceful than “I believe?” Less persuasive?’ 

A lanky young man in the front row muttered: ‘We’ll be here for fucking hours at this rate. I’ll miss my film unit.’ 

The lecturer glared at him. ‘I believe that students are rude, ignorant and hedonistic,’ he said. ‘Get my drift?’ 

‘What does hedonistic mean?’ someone called out. 

The lecturer sighed. ‘Never mind,’ he said, and pointed to the slide again, read out the words again: ‘I believe that Australia is in danger of being swamped by Muslims.’  

He surveyed the class. Still no mobile phones. Good. 

‘Let’s consider the use of the word swamped,’ he said. ‘Now, swamped is unarguably a metaphor, since the Muslims in question have not literally turned into forested wetlands typically found near rivers or lakes and containing mineral soil that drains very slowly.’ 

Laughter. 

‘But note too,’ the lecture said, ‘How the word swamped also has pejorative associations. Swamps often contain alligators and disease-bearing insects, and they give off noxious odours, like the smell of rotting eggs. So what can we infer from this analysis of the single word swamped? In a nutshell: that this first-person narrator associates Muslims with danger and disease.’ 

 ‘See what I mean?’ the young woman cried out. ‘Pauline Hanson’s a racist.’ 

The lecturer shushed her. ‘Now let’s see what happens when I substitute the word swamped with a synonym,’ he said. ‘The word marshed. Because to say that Australia is in danger of being marshed by Muslims just sounds plain ridiculous.’ 

More laughter.  

The young man with gleaming hair raised his hand. ‘Swamps and marshes are not synonyms,’ he said. ‘They have very different eco-systems and locations. You were just trying to get a cheap laugh.’ 

The young woman turned round to face him. ‘You missed the lecturer’s point,’ she said. ‘And you obviously don’t realise that humour can be deadly serious.’ 

The lecturer held up his hand again. ‘I take both responses as comments, not questions,’ he said. 

Another hand waved in the air. A mature-aged student in a pink cardigan.  ‘I remember Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech,’ she said. ‘She said Australia was in danger of being swamped by Asians.’ 

The young woman raised her hand. ‘She’s slagged off at Aborigines as well,’ she said. ‘And gays. And transgender people.’ 

‘And environmentalists!’ someone shouted. 

‘Unionists!’ cried a different voice.  

‘Guys! Quiet, please!’ The lecturer shouted over them.  

He waited for the noise to abate.  

‘Just calm down,’ he said, quietly. ‘Let’s forget about the possible existence of a possibly real person who might possibly have made this statement. We must focus only on the statement. Let’s move on. I now want to consider the use of the word Australia.’ He cleared his throat. ‘At the literal level, the word describes a geo-political entity, but it’s clear that the word is meant to be read symbolically.’ 

A waving hand. ‘How do you know that?’ 

The lecturer sighed again. ‘Because I don’t think she…I mean, I don’t think the narrator actually believes that hordes of Muslims are literally going to spread out in a great big mass and cover the whole country until…well, until we can’t see the land anymore. That Muslims…Look, this is stupid. Why do I have to explain this?’ 

The young woman raised her hand. ‘Well, maybe the narrator is crazy,’ she said. ‘Maybe the narrator wakes up in the middle of the night and sees the whole country covered in slime and rotting eggs and believes all that awful stuff is melted-down Muslims.’  

The lecturer shook his head. ‘That’s mere speculation,’ he said. ‘We would need to know more in order to deduce that the narrator is crazy.’ 

‘I know more,’ the young woman called out. ‘Pauline Hanson came into parliament dressed in a burka. That’s pretty damn crazy.’ 

‘She was making a point about security in parliament,’ the gleaming young man said.  

‘She was being racist,’ the young woman shot back. ‘She was saying that Muslims in burkas are terrorists, hiding weapons underneath—’  

‘Enough!’ The lecturer waved his hands in a flurry. ‘Both of you, enough!’ He swept his eyes across the room. ‘I want all of you,’ he said, ‘to expunge from your minds any belief that the narrator is Pauline Hanson. Forget any contextual information about Pauline Hanson. No more. Desist. Let’s just get back – please – to the words on the page. We were meant to be considering the use of the word Australia. Its symbolic meanings. Now I think we can infer from the immediate context of the statement that the narrator believes Australia stands for a set of values and beliefs incompatible with those of Muslims. Further, since the nature of those values and beliefs is unspecified, it could be inferred that the narrator assumes such values and beliefs to be self-evident.’ 

‘But it’s only self-evident for people like her,’ the young woman said. ‘White people.’ She rose from her seat, her eyes blazing with anger, and turned to face the audience. ‘I have Muslim friends,’ she cried. ‘Kind, decent, intelligent people who get glared at in the street, whose kids get picked on at school, who can’t get a job because–’ 

‘They’d rather bludge off the taxpayer!’ the gleaming young man bellowed, and sprang from his seat. ‘They get special privileges just because they’re foreign. They have hordes of kids they can’t afford. They can’t speak English but couldn’t be bothered learning it. They need to pull their finger out of their arse.’  

‘Your head’s up your arse!’ the young woman shouted back. ‘Mr Racist Anyone-can-make-it-if-they-try. Mr—’ 

‘Why don’t you tell your Muslim pals to go back to where they came from?’ 

The young woman laughed. ‘Jesus, are you some kind of walking cliché, or what?’ She waved her hands at him, furiously. ‘And what was that crap you said earlier? About Pauline Hanson’s right to freedom of speech? How about responsibility of speech? How about making sure before you open your big fat mouth that what you say is based on facts?’ 

‘Your facts, you mean!’ the gleaming young man shouted. 

The young woman laughed. ‘Your lot only wants freedom of speech when it suits your agenda,’ she said. ‘You’re the first ones to howl someone down when you don’t like what they say.’ 

‘Bullshit. My—’ 

‘Your lot hounded and harassed a woman who wrote LEST. WE. FORGET.  She wanted to make a point about refugees. How we leave them to rot for years in detention centres, in camps full of disease. All the victims of war, victims of persecution. And we forget them. A Muslim woman wanted us to remember them.’ 

‘But she used the words on Anzac Day! What don’t you get? She used the words of the most important day in Australia to—’ 

More cries of outrage…vilifying Australian soldiers…sacredness of Anzac Day…ah, shut up with your sacredness of Anzac Day…an ideological construct to promote nationalism…soldiers conned into a useless sacrifice…fuck you, those soldiers fought for our freedom… 

‘Exactly!’ the lecturer shrieked. 

All eyes were suddenly upon him. 

‘Australian soldiers fought for that young Muslim woman’s right to freedom of speech. And what happened to her?’ The lecturer pointed to the gleaming young man. ‘I’ll tell you what happened. Politicians demanded she be deported. She received death threats from all over the country. People flooded her social media pages with videos of beheadings and rapes. She had to move to a different location. She had to change her phone number. She had to run away and hide.’ 

He took a deep breath. 

‘She was swamped,’ he said.  

Two days later, the lecturer was summoned to an interview with the Head of School. He was reprimanded for his lack of behaviour management and, much more severely, for his encouragement of and participation in highly inflammatory political statements. He was sternly reminded that as an employee of the university, he was legally obliged to refrain from expressing any political views that might damage the university’s public reputation. The Head of Department also made it unambiguously clear that the lecturer’s refusal to denounce criticisms of Anzac Day was particularly, and deeply, offensive.

He was also required to change the title of his lecture series from ‘Reading as subversion’ to ‘The universal art of narrative.’  

— —

Act three: Reading and the meaning of life 

The meaning of life is that it stops. Franz Kafka. 

The meaning of life is whatever stops you from killing yourself. Albert Camus.

The meaning of life is writing about the meaninglessness of life. Disgruntled reader of bleak European fiction.