Peras: An Extract From A Page, And Sleeping With The Dictionary

The authors of Peras: an Extract from a Page, and Sleeping with the Dictionary, use their writing to discuss textual consciousness and what takes place during the reading of a piece. McCaffery’s experimental text, Peras: an Extract from a Page, introduces the idea of the page as an autonomous being that is launched into a schizophrenic state of self-loathing when written or inscribed upon. Within this text, the reader is characterized as an inconsequential witness to the madness of the page. McCaffery discusses the page as a body of self-expression, rather than a being which derives its meaning from the intentions of the writer. Harryette Mullen’s prose poem, Sleeping with the Dictionary, compares the interaction between the reader and the …show more content…
Brackets on a page are said to resemble rings, which are then related back to the gyre in Yeats, a shape made up of squares, spheres, and cones. The writing becomes almost nonsensical, which submits the idea that a reader’s search for meaning within a text is useless and even perverse. This idea is reiterated later in the essay as the process of reading is dissected. The author describes reading as the brain making “pairings”, replacing words with ideologies and preconceived ideas of the functions of the words. McCaffery compares what happens in the brain when one reads to classical taxonomy, which is the classification of organisms, according to their differences, similarities, and characteristics. This observation argues that readers tend to classify words and their meanings narrowly within their own limited spheres of knowledge. Only the page is said to have a full realization of the significance of a …show more content…
Mullen’s focus is on the consciousness of the reader and their engaged interaction with the book, while McCaffery’s writing delves into the unconscious of the page. Both authors feel the need to attribute life to the writing and give it human capacities. The erotic word choice, “groping”, “alluring”, “aroused”, “positions”, “penetration”, and references to the “nightly act” along with the title, “Sleeping with the Dictionary”, compares the interaction between the reader and the text to a relationship between lovers. This requires a level of passion and emotion from both the reader and the writing to obtain some pleasure or, in this case illumination, from the words. This comparison gives the text a certain level of physicality, a technique which is also used by McCaffery as he calls the page a