Bathroom Reading or The Chamber Plot

            How many Seinfeld viewers are out there? Do you remember the “Bookstore” episode where George is at the bookstore and needs to attend to some important business and takes a book into the reading room with him? Well, I just saw a patron head into the men’s room and by the size of the tome he took with him, he is planning on quite a lengthy reading session.

            Some readers may think he took it with him because he didn’t want to find it reshelved when he came out. However, right outside the door are tables (none in use at the time) as well as filing cabinets that other patrons have used to place their books while attending to business. Then there is the argument that there is nothing wrong with a bit of multi-tasking. After all, perhaps this could be viewed as an opportune moment to knock out a few chapters in relatively quiet solitude. Another theory might be that the book was so moving he couldn’t bear to put it down. My curiosity was roused, so as a librarian in training, I decided to perform some research on the joys of bathroom reading.

            It turns out that a vast majority of people read in the necessary. Henry Miller, the American writer, enjoyed reading there and even went so far as to recommend pairing toilet styles with individual authors. “O the wonderful recesses in the toilet! To them I owe knowledge of Boccaccio, of Rabelais, of Petronius, of The Golden Ass. All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet…There are passages in Ulysses which can read only in the toilet-if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content. And the more ramshackle the toilet, the more dilapidated it be, the better. To enjoy Rabelais, for example-such a passage as How to Rebuild the Walls of Paris- I recommend a plain, country toilet, a little out-house in the corn patch, with a crescent sliver of light coming through the door.”

            In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter where you read as long as you read. Just don’t forget to wash your hands.

Reference

Miller, Henry. 1959. The Henry Miller Reader. New York: New Directions Publishing.