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
text to an intimate relationship between lovers, marked by mutual stimulation and pleasure. Each author personifies writing to distinguish the role of the reader and the problematic search for meaning within a given text. In Peras: an Extract from a Page, McCaffery reveals that the experience of the reader is subject to the will of the page. The first lines give the page a sense of self, saying “If the page had an unconscious it would find writing unbearable and would feel itself to be a body covered in black larvae”. The page is defined here as a self-governing, thinking and feeling, body. It seems that the page is made to feel attacked by the “black larvae”, or words, that the writer inflicts upon them.
Though the writer persecutes the page, it remains a powerful force that retaliates through “self-articulation.” McCaffery explains that the page is able to express its own ideas through a process of “invagination”, or doubling back upon itself until the characters of language are distributed to take on their own form. The page is said to be “obeying not the voice that made it happen but the voice’s muter face”. This concept takes away any power or influence of the writer over the work, and the reader seems to be an insignificant witness to the consciousness of a page, which they cannot begin to understand.
The text discusses taking away the common associations and meanings of words by breaking them down into shapes, and examining the sounds, movements of the pages of books rather than trying to read them.
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
text.
Harryette Mullen’s poem, Sleeping with the Dictionary, portrays reading as a mutually beneficial interaction between reader and text. The narrator refers to the dictionary as her “silver-tongued companion.” The book is characterized as a companion to the reader, whereas McCaffery’s writing relays that writing is indifferent to the reader. In the line “A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art”, alliteration is used to further illuminate the idea that the book is a conversational partner to the reader, and a certain level of closeness and respect exists between the two. Mullen personifies the dictionary, writing that it is “not averse” to the habits of the reader. The dictionary seems to have an attitude of understanding towards the reader.
The poet discusses the process of reading, calling it “exercise in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages”.
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
“body”.
The dictionary is described as “heavy with the weight of all the meanings” between its covers. This implies that books possess meanings of importance to the reader and exist for the benefit of the reader. Mullen’s poem also expresses that reading awakens the imagination and the reader falls into the language like a trance, unlike McCaffery, whose writing creates a sense of distance and hostility between the reader and writing. Next to the subject of the poem’s bed, “a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words”. This line highlights the contrast between Mullen and McCaffery’s views of the function of the page. In this poem, the pad functions solely to record words, whereas in Peras: an Extract from a Page, the page hates writing and doesn’t need writing to exist.
These two texts present extreme examples of the disparity between the intentions of the writer and the perception of the reader. McCaffery’s writing creates a world where the reader cannot attempt to understand the complex feelings of the page, and in Mullen’s poem, the reader and the text seem to collaborate with perfect harmony and understanding. Both writers attempt to bridge the gap between art and life through giving their writing human feelings and functions. McCaffery gives the page an unconscious, and Mullen attributes human characteristics to a dictionary. Though each piece seeks to define the process of reading, neither is able to completely identify where the authority of the writer or the page itself ends, and the reader’s conjecture begins, when deciphering a text.