PR: Chantal Lee
Chantal Lee (@_chantallee_) is an art librarian based in New York City. She sometimes organizes shows with friends.
Chantal Lee (@_chantallee_) is an art librarian based in New York City. She sometimes organizes shows with friends.
The last thing you finished reading
“My pet peeve is a bad massage.” A text message from my friend Kōan. Kōan is the kind of reader + friend who when I ask what I should read next, it is part divination. On my birthday ~10 years ago I was walking by Strand Bookstore on my way to work when I texted them asking what book I should get for my birthday. They responded with The Selected Poems of Frank O’Hara and that I should read the poem “Nocturne.” Since then, The Selected Poems has become one of my most essential books and anything that swirls and with feeling like in the poem “Nocturne” makes me think of Kōan.
Something on your list but you never begin
Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
Something you reread
Sentences that have secrets.
Conditions in which you read best
During the day and caffeinated.
Something you never forget
The awe/confusion/amazement I felt the first time I read the opening paragraph of the chapter that introduces Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov.
Conditions in which you read most often
When I’m obsessed.
A favourite bookstore
Any bookstore that feels like people.
A favourite title
Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz.
A favourite book cover
Seiobo There Below by László Krasznahorkai.
A favourite nostalgia read
The Ithaca chapter in Ulysses.
A favourite greatest of all time, personal canon read
The fictions + travelogues + history books + memoirs of W.G. Sebald.
Do you method read
I underline, circle, and write questions, observations, notes in the margins. I used to also color-code to hopscotch in the book.
Do your books tend toward any condition
The more I love a book the faster they deteriorate.
Do you have any books that are prized possessions
So many and for different reasons. Sometimes it has to do with the book, sometimes it has to do with when/where/who I was when I read the book, sometimes it has to do with other people.
A text that surprised you
Molloy from Beckett – the part in the novel where, halfway in, I left boredom and became extremely fascinated, even though the text didn’t really change.
A text that altered you somehow
An experience of reading Borges. I can’t remember if it was the Selected Fictions or the Selected Non-Fictions. I sat in a coffeeshop on the corner of Tompkins Square Park. I looked out the window whenever I needed to lift my eyes. It was light when I arrived and dark when I left. I was 19 or 20 and because of that whole day reading him, I was starting to understand time and a perception of existence differently, in a more material, phenomenological sense.
Open up a text and copy a line at random
“On hot July days, the wall opposite cast a brilliant, harsh light into the damp little courtyard.”
Thanks for playing:
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