It's a wonderful loan

A wonderful thing happened. I got a staff library card. Only for a few months, but.. still. Not just the kind that lets you into the library, in case you need to have a meeting or fix a laptop. The other kind. The academic kind.

Three words.

Interlibrary. Fucking. Loans.

But what to do with my new, very temporary, and somewhat unearned privileges? I got out What is Philosophy?, because I've had that out of the library on one card or another for most of the past twenty years (and one day I will read it!). But what else?

I saw a friend recently who's going through all the references for a Thousand Plateaus, including the random articles in French magazines from the seventies, and this sounded like a) fun and b) the kind of reading/attempt at understanding that I have never really had time/the organisational skills to do. It is, I think, the kind of thing that is supposed to happen during the first year of a PhD, or did before there began the (quite reasonable) expectation that you might write something during this first year. Just, you know, to see if you could and what that felt like. Hard, is what it felt like, and panicky deadline, and definitely good to do in the first year rather than the last, but it meant that all reading already had a definite sense of purpose (is this useful? Does this quote feel like it might turn into a chapter?). So the idea of just slowly, at my own pace, really thoroughly reading something sounded delightful. It also sounded like a job for the nice "request this item" button.

Guattari's Chaosmosis was something I read some of in my first PhD year, before everything got taken over by Nietzsche Nietzsche Nietzsche. And (like A Thousand Plateaus) its references were many and varied. There was a little pushback from the interlibrary loan people (Do you really need a book on the dreams of the Warlpiri to teach in what is basically a cross between a management and engineering department? Yes. Yes, I do.) but then came the day when I, like a proud huntsman, got to bring home all of the references to chapter one.

Look at them all :)

There was also a random cuckoo book that I hadn't requested - The Fool Would Be A Favourite, or, The Discreet Lover, a play from 1657 that the very first sentence of the introduction described as "a strange play." From what I could see, it had been reprinted once since the 1600's in 1926 (the volume which I had been mysteriously sent from Glasgow University library) and then never again.

I admired its initiative, stowing away with the others, and initially thought I might see if there were productive readings that could emerge from including it in the combination (assemblages! Transversality! Rhizome!). But the introduction wasn't promising ("With its complicated and by no means clearly developed plot, with its undoubtedly hazy characterisation and with its frequently dismal dialogue, it can hardly be styled a literary masterpiece"), and a brief skim confirmed that it did seem a bit shit. The main plot seems to be an idiot coming up from the country to be a courtier, and the hilarity that ensues when someone exceeds their station. I include here a random extract from act five involving cross-dressing.

So I took it back. And have since remained curious about who had requested it and why they wanted it (if this was you, get in touch! In a few years, when I've actually put in some way to comment).

And since then, I've been slowly reading my way through chapter one and friends, and it has been great :) My zero-hours contract alas ran out before I had made it all the way through.. but this did make me finally get an alumni card which, while it doesn't bring interlibrary loan fun, does let me get regular books out. And it turns out you can pick up Desert Dreamers fairly cheaply from biblio.co.uk.

And I feel like it's now at the point where I would like to.. maybe.. write something about them? About the process? Write. Something.

Which was what I was going to do here, but instead I told you a bit of a story. This is all okay.