Reading and Looking: Texts and Images
$265
Join us for a text and image Delve seminar in which we will read a series of classic unconventional short texts, both old and new, that explore the complex roles color (with an emphasis on the color blue) plays in literature, the fine arts, philosophy, music, and daily life. We are said to be a visual culture, but few people read images as critically as text. To sharpen our seeing in both forms is what this seminar hopes to achieve, as critical reading in one deepens the experience of the other. Together we will consider such questions as: how do we “read” an image as opposed to a text and vice versa? What are the similarities and differences between verbal and visual media?
Our gateway into the world of color will be Vladimir Nabokov’s startling description in his memoir Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited of his synesthesia—the neurological condition that led to the author’s seeing words and letters as colors. Readers will never see —or hear— the letters of the alphabet in quite the same way after reading Nabokov’s rendition of the ABC’s. From there we will move to two classic books devoted to the color blue: William Gass’s virtuosic On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry, a book that explores the color blue while at the same time diving deep into “blue” language and what it means to love words and to write; and Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, which is both a response to Gass and an experiment in autobiography—an exploration of and love letter to blue as color, mood (loss, joy), and its role in art. We will end with the writer, filmmaker, and artist Derek Jarman’s book Chroma: A Book of Color—a genre-bending book that examines the color spectrum in a series of insightful, playful short essays, written as he was losing his sight at the end of his life. Eventually Jarman was able to see only in shades of blue—circumstances that make his ruminations on color both powerful and poignant.
Alongside these readings, in each session, using the large screen in Literary Arts’ beautiful new seminar room, we will look at works of art (both painting and photography from many periods ranging from Giotto to contemporary art) that are either referred to in the texts or that can be placed in fruitful conversation with the readings. Together we will take a chromophilic journey into the realms of vision, visual pleasure, language, and literature.
The books by Gass, Nelson, and Jarman are in print. The short Nabokov text will be supplied in pdf. Participants will be sent files of the images we will be discussing prior to each session.
Texts:
On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William Gass
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Chroma: A Book of Color by Derek Jarman
Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.
Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have questions.
Liaison position
Every in-person class and seminar at Literary Arts has one liaison position. Liaisons perform specific duties for each class meeting. If you are a liaison for a class or seminar, the full amount of your tuition is covered by Literary Arts.
Apply here for the liaison position.
Damien Jack
Damien Jack is an editor, researcher, and writer living in Portland, Oregon. He worked for many years in publishing in New York, including for the estates of Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, and Jorge-Luis Borges. He is working on a book of literary criticism, tentatively titled Reading Joan Didion in the Anthropocene.
Harriet Rubin
Harriet Rubin founded Currency, an award winning imprint at Doubleday, for which she discovered and developed bestselling books by philosophers, poets, prelates and CEOs. She is the author of the international bestseller, The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women and Dante in Love: The World’s Greatest Poem and How it Made History, for which she was twice awarded a residency at the American Academy in Rome. Her articles have appeared in the NYT, the WSJ, USA Today, and Fast Company magazine among other publications. She’s been interviewed by Scott Simon on NPR and has guest lectured at more than a dozen colleges across the country and around the world. In 2017, she began a four-year full-time training with the master artist Juliette Aristides in the techniques of classical representational drawing and painting. Her paintings have won awards and have been shown at the Maryhill Museum and in Seattle galleries.
