Birth of the Reader #2

This is not a reading group in the usual sense — there’s no homework, no prep, no pressure to arrive with notes, or hot shot theories. In fact we encourage you to not do the reading. Come unprepared, just show up. At the table, we read together, out loud, in turn. Voice by voice, sentence by sentence. When a question or thought arises, we pause, we reflect, we talk, we think.

In November 2024, I attended a table read at Beyond Baroque, a literary arts centre in Venice, Los Angeles. The group included artists, emeritus faculty, and others - like me who just turned up. I’d been invited at a dinner on the day I landed in LA and, jet-lagged and giddy with excitement about my short USA-adventure and hungry for new experiences, wanting to carpe diem everything, I agreed to come. The night before, I panicked: I hadn’t done the reading! Flashbacks to grad school hit — rushing through assigned texts before seminars, skimming online for summaries, crafting a “good question” to avoid embarrassment. I set my alarm early and managed to skim through the photocopied pages At the table in Beyond Baroque a whole other experience unfolded. We read “What is Freedom?” by Hannah Arendt. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Despite the generous invitation and briefing, I assumed it would be like any other reading group I’d gone to. But this was different, the slowness of the process, the generosity of attention, a rhythm of different voices, and accents. No rush, no showmanship. Pauses that allowed questions to be formulated and answered generously, not to perform knowledge, but to understand together. We didn’t finish the text, and I couldn’t make the other sessions. But, I left wanting this again. A focus on reading. Not jumping to the conclusion, not looking up the summary, not trying to find a retort, but careful attentive reading.

You are invited to join Birth of the Reader at The Little Machine. We will be reading “What is Power” by Fred Dewey, from The School of Public Life. We will be reading on paper, a hard copy will be provided to participants. Some coffee, tea will be provided. Just the text, its words, the breath between them, and the thoughts they stir.

Host or Publisher The Little Machine