I’m a literary voyeur. Like the wanderer who steps off the predictable path, I set out most days in the hope that I’ll encounter a new way of seeing the spaces in which I live. I’m also a collector. Years ago, I began to collect sightings of readers, because I thought I might gain awareness of how our urban lives are mapped out in the books we choose to read in public, particularly on transit. Many people, for instance, read on transit to place a wall between themselves and fellow passengers; others don’t know how to be alone in a crowd. For the rest of us, that commute is the only time we get to retreat into an extended private conversation with ourselves as we dive into another’s world.
A question began to persist: If I’m a voyeur, are you, the reader, an exhibitionist? How do readers perform the private act of reading within the public realm, their preference for the written word on full display. The book becomes an invitation to look closer. And, just think, you have no idea what emotions may floor you from one sentence to the next, and when they do, I’m there, watching. I began to imagine who each reader might be, and how the text they read would ultimately impact the spaces in which they live.
The reader sighting that started it all was at The Old Nick on Danforth Avenue. At the bar, a woman neared the end of a book. Visibly distraught, she placed the book down from time to time, only to pick it up again moments later. This continued for some time, until she stood suddenly, slapping her money on the bar as she readied to leave. She was so distressed, in fact, that I asked if she was all right, noting the title of the book before it disappeared into her bag. She said that this wasn’t the right time or place to end the book, that when it came time to say goodbye to the protagonist she’d need to be at home. After she left, I ran to the nearest bookstore where I purchased a copy of the book she’d been reading: A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. I read it that night in anticipation of the final pages, where I would once again meet this reader within the book that moved her so.
I began to look for readers everywhere. You may be the woman I see who, each week, is deeper into yet another book. You may be the man whose weathered copies of science fiction novels betray multiple readings. It’s likely that the book you carry bears the splatter of last night’s dinner or the crumbs of this morning’s breakfast, the vague odour of your bed sheets or your partner’s cologne. Under my observation, the reader both reads and reveals a narrative, the act of reading in turn inspiring an act of writing.
My work is performed on Toronto’s subways, streetcars, and buses. In Toronto, transit riders are decidedly introverted. Courtesy aside — removing my knapsack so you can pass, standing up so you can sit, wearing fitted earphones so you don’t have to hear my music — fellow passengers enter into an unspoken agreement that it’s not rude to sit in silence, gesturing only in the rare instant that you’re sitting on my jacket, or I’m standing on your purse strap. Perhaps this is why readers feel safe to pull out a book, turning the average subway car into a cultural cocoon. With little effort, the average forty-five minute trip yields at least twenty reader sightings.
During downtown Toronto rush hour, shoulder-to-shoulder I’m often able to note a book’s title and author, and most often the page number at the time of the sighting. Armed with this information and only a brief physical description of the reader, I craft a fictional response to the entire scene, ending each sighting with a poetic short fiction about the reader and who he or she may be. The online blog Seen Reading — www.seenreading.com — is the forum in which I posted my reader sightings. To date, there are over seven hundred sightings, and the project earned me the moniker “Gossip Girl of the Book World” among my regular visitors. Early versions of some of the stories that appear here originated there.
The pieces are bite-sized, reflective of an age in which communications are disseminated through texts, tweets, and status updates. Twitter, for instance, places constraints on the user, one hundred and forty characters per tweet, to be exact. It’s taught us how to be mindful of our words. In a venue where every character counts, complete words and entire sentences take on a whole new meaning. How and why we place importance on each character, word, and sentence becomes a craft. What’s followed is an increase in the popularity in online microfiction, postcard fictions, poetic short fictions — whichever term you prefer. The economy of a tweet, by way of contrast, however, should not be mistaken for a creatively constrained art form. Take Ernest Hemingway’s infamous short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” When I read this the first time, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a sentence that had been cut from one of his novels, or a rushed scribble on a napkin intended as the starting point for another. Mostly, though, I wondered if the first draft had been seven words. Or seventeen. Do we say more when we say less?
I’m far from alone in my impulse, the Seen Reading Movement alive in any person who has ever wanted to ask a complete stranger how he or she is liking a book as they rumble down the track together to their final destinations. While commuters may feel anonymous on public transit, the vehicles are structured in such a way that we face one another, always in the line of someone else’s view. Public transit situates us so that we are given license to accept what’s right in front of us, but will likely arouse our desire to compare our narrative to someone else’s, to give ourselves permission to speculate upon a person’s private space, or life, with no fear of recourse or punishment. Where did you come from? How did you get here? Where are you going?
After five years of watching readers, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that as there is no one way to read a book, there is no one way to know a reader. To that end, I address each character only as He or She to invite many readings of the text.
Be seeing you.
Julie Wilson