Pathological Relations: Madeleine Iona Lukács Smith
25 questions on reading
Madeleine Iona Lukács Smith (@swan.light.kobido) is a kobido spécialiste living in Melbourne, Australia. She was meant for higher education but she had to become a celebrity facialist.
Anything that someone writes to me and for me, alters me. More reading and writing should be intimate, hidden, carved into arms.
The last thing you finished reading
My own press release.
The last thing you abandoned reading
Melania by Melania Trump.
Next on your list
Melania: Early Christianity through the Life of One Family edited by Catherine Chin & Caroline Schroeder. The first line in the introduction nourished me on such a deep level that I abandoned it for 3 years. (“The Roman aristocrats Melania the Elder and her granddaughter Melania the Younger are startling, glittering, and disturbing figures in the early history of Christianity.”)
Something on your list but you never begin
Almost everything on my list I’ve begun but never finished.
Something in which you have no interest
For better or worse, I’m not interested in much.
Worst thing you’ve read cover to cover
Probably Wives Like Us by Plum Sykes.
Something you reread
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie.
Something you never forget
“Her last name is: Oblivion, Forgotten.” (The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete).
Conditions in which you read best
Times of great distress.
Conditions in which you read most often
Times of great distress. Like right now when I’m in bed reading a book called Destination Unknown and drinking beer.
Conditions in which you cannot read
Most conditions.
A favourite author
Marguerite Porete. All my friends, burnt alive.
A favourite genre, form, theme
Divine Love. Murder. Books 3mm or less in thickness.
A favourite title
“Town of the Sound of a Twig Breaking” by Anne Carson.
A favourite book cover
I’m actually on the cover of a book. So that book with the photograph of me. But I’m not telling because it’s cultish.
A favourite recent read
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser. S/o to my ex boyfriend for downloading books for me to read on my thousand year old iPad.
A favourite nostalgia read
I, Little Asylum by Emmanuelle Guattari. A magazine article about my family written in 1998 called “Bringing up baby.”
A favourite greatest of all time, personal canon read
The Mirror of Simple Souls by Marguerite Porete. Alice in Bed by Susan Sontag.
Do you annotate
God, no.
Do your books tend toward any condition
Unopened by me, well loved by another.
Do you have any books that are prized possessions
My Agatha Christie collection, all a very specific Fontana edition. My copy of Wuthering Heights. An exceptionally beautiful edition of The Cloud of Unknowing, unread.
A text that surprised you
The Goodreads app.
A text that disappointed you
A poor translation of The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila (translation by Mirabai Starr). I had to abandon it and I never got a better (conservative) version. Also lowkey, the Daodejing.
A text that altered you somehow
Anything that someone writes to me and for me, alters me. More reading and writing should be intimate, hidden, carved into arms. I’ve never received a love letter but a postcard from Saoirse Bertram is close to God.
Open up a text and copy a line at random
“The cosmos is in one’s own hands, the ten thousand transformations are born from oneself.” Line from The Hidden Agreement (anonymous author), inside Taoist Internal Alchemy translated and annotated by Fabrizio Pregadio.
Thanks for playing:
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