In Defense of the Throne
Everyone has a favorite place to read. Mine is a large, overstuffed chintz arm chair in my office. I was looking at a lovely shelter magazine not too long ago that featured style saving tips about how to fix your furniture faux pas, presented in the classic buy/keep/toss format. The most egregious upholstery sin in this article was tacky '80s black chintz. Toss it! With tongs!
Horrors. What not to sit in. Right in my own home. But here's where I'm drawing the line with well meaning decorators: I am not tossing my chair. Although it's faded considerably--not so much that a well placed throw doesn't hide the gray--it is my throne, my prime reading spot. I'm not even reupholstering it. It's a happy chair, a reading chair, an editing chair, a napping chair. If my chair could talk, it would tell tales of books, manuscripts, magazines and dreams from as far back as the '80s, when it's chintz still had a bright sheen, and it was a definite "Buy."
Everyone has a different reading throne. Some people like to read in bed. Others like a park bench on a spring day. I have one daughter who particularly likes to read at the dinner table, a habit that we are trying to discourage without throwing the baby out.
I have one friend who admitted to book club one night that she only read when she was drying her hair-- the only time she got to herself. Of course we were curious. Here's the trick: She shut the toilet seat and opened the book on it. She dried her hair upside down, so she used one hand for the hairdryer and one for fluffing and page turning. Fluff, turn. Fluff, turn. Good volume. Before you criticize her methodology, let me just say: this was one well read woman. Her hair was perfect.
I'd venture to guess that were the Pew folks to take a random sampling of where people read, a high percentage would admit that even if they don't publicly celebrate National Bathroom Reading Week, they have a magazine, a mystery, or some self-help book or another tucked away in their bathroom, for that peaceful moment when they might actually get to read. Or dry their hair.
But who's asking? The written word has the power to transport us to another world. When we return we bring souvenirs, picture postcards and, most importantly, memories of our adventures. Setting off on a mind trip, it doesn't matter if we're sitting on white porcelain or black chintz when we depart.
The reading throne deserves respect.
I once saw a piece of lavatory graffiti I think I'll spend the rest of life pondering. "There are no metaphors," some malcontent had written. Carried to it's ultimate reduction, that assertion means that no word or act can represent anything more than itself. A world without metaphor is a hermetic nightmare, utterly incomprehensible, without possibility of humor or insight. Everything would happen once. No individual or event could be interpreted in the light of another.
There are metaphors, though. language exists, though its connection to reality is an ongoing open question. Literature exists. We are able to entertain narratives about other people's lives, even imaginary people's lives, and recognize elements familiar tot us from our own hopes, fears and dreams. Past ives, imaginary lives, are seen to contain messages for us, metaphorically speaking. Our understanding may draw upon them. This is the importance of fiction, that it offers meaning.
~Robert Stone
from "The Reconquest of Reality" in Writers Workshop in a Book: the Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction, edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez (Chronicle Books, 2007)
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Reading requires task lighting that comes from behind the reader's shoulder. This can be accomplished by placing a floor lamp either at the right or the left of the reading chair. The bottom of the shade should be located at eye level to avoid glare. |
