Lecture for an Empty Room
During which Judy Blume and jwcurry are mentioned together for the first and only time,
All of this as a way to think about reading, about books, responsibility and community; about how we interact with and learn from each other. To attempt to reach out beyond our individual bubbles, or whatever you might call it. I want to read about people just like me. I want to read works I feel connected to, working to expand upon my experience. I want to read about people nothing at all like me, so I might better understand. In April 2023, responding to a Sunday Times piece that took her words out of context, Judy Blume tweeted a section from a piece on her in Variety:
Blume went on to say, “What are you protecting your children from? Protecting your children means educating them and arming them with knowledge, and reading and supporting what they want to read. No child is going to become transgender or gay or lesbian because they read a book. It’s not going to happen. They may say, ‘Oh, this is just like me. This is what I’m feeling and thinking about.”
“Or, ‘I’m interested in this because I have friends who may be gay, bi, lesbian.’ They want to know!” Blume concluded. “I just read a book that was wonderfully enlightening to me. It’s called ‘Gender Queer’ [a memoir by Maia Kobabe]. It’s probably the No. 1 banned book in America right now. And I thought, ‘This young person is telling me how they came to be what they are today.’ And I learned a lot, and became even more empathetic. That’s what books are all about.”
Every study that offers that an engaged reading provides the reader an empathy, able to consider beyond the boundaries of their own selves, their own lives and situations, although that doesn’t necessarily translate to how writers treat other writers. We’re all on the same side, aren’t we? Composing our stories or poems or novels or essays or some combination thereof. Aren’t all people interesting? Ottawa poet, bibliographer and publisher jwcurry once offered that his biggest goal was “to remain interested,” which isn’t as easy or as straightforward as the simplicity of that particular phrase might suggest.
Consider that he didn’t say “engaged” or “interesting.” He said “interested.” An interest that fuels the drive to keep going, which for many, prompts the drive to create. What else is out there? What might I do today?
A conversation: pre-Covid, I was paired with another writer for an on-campus reading at one of the universities, and, once the event was announced, I began my usual social media push, mentioning that the two of us were reading together. I soon realized that my co-reader was doing the same, but only mentioning themselves. What is this impulse? Why not mention the other reader? This isn’t the first time I’ve seen anyone do that, but it rankles, and I legitimately don’t understand it. Oh, the counterpoint between those two would be interesting to catch, someone might say, I should go to that. Is the omission purely selfish? Is this an inability to move beyond one’s own bubble?
There was a reading I caught via the Ottawa International Writers Festival a few years back, three different writers that individually I would have been open to hearing, but it was the combination of the three reading together is what finally prompted me to leave the house. It felt too good of a line-up to miss.