To reach a state of mind where nothing can be found boring. I consider very few texts truly dull; I have questions to ask of almost any piece of writing. Tedium is another matter: I could be deeply interested in a text yet conclude that “tediousness” is one of its several qualities.

Does this imply an indiscriminate approach? That I don’t care what I am reading? No. That is not quite it. Obviously I prefer some texts to others.

I started reading a Hardy Boy mystery in the bookstore while my daughter was looking at books in the children section. The prose was somewhat “stiff,” formal in some respects yet riddled with dated slang. This odd style seemed to infuse the imaginary world with a spurious sort of “reality.” One imagines that this is exactly how certain people at a certain time imagined eleven-year old boys imagining a fictional world. This, then, holds a certain interest for me. Another case: I have a book by David Shapiro, one of the second-generation New York School poets (Poems from Deal). Although I never found his work particularly impressive, when I re-read this book now I have quite a few questions in my mind: is he the same sort of poet as Ron Padgett? Why don’t I remember reading these poems the first time? What was he trying to do? Has anyone else really read this book, and what did they think about it? Answering these questions would still be a fascinating task, even if I found the poems themselves “dull” in some respects.

To have read a text for years and never known what anyone else thought of it. A unique form of isolation.