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A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: paratexts
A collection of engaging essays on writing and material culture that addresses our ability to know or understand ?things?. In A Peepshow with Views of the Interior, acclaimed fiction writer and poet. Aislinn Hunter writes lyrical paratexts on topics ranging from Charlotte Brontë?s dogs, bird displays in museums, peep shows, and clocks and convalescence.
104 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2009
21 people want to read
About the author
Aislinn Hunter
16 books43 followersAislinn Hunter is the author of six books: two books of poetry, three books of fiction and a book of lyric essays. She is a contributing editor at Arc Magazine and has contributed to numerous anthologies. She has a BFA in The History of Art and in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, an MFA from The University of British Columbia, an MSc in Writing and Cultural Politics from The University of Edinburgh and is currently finishing a PhD in English Literature at Edinburgh. She teaches Creative Writing part-time at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and lives in Vancouver with her husband Glenn and two Border collies.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 26, 2019
“Put light in your mouth and you have a poem.” - 12
A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts is an experimental love letter to things, words, self-knowledge, history, portals, entry points, imagination, language. I loved the sections about writing and books. A few ideas went over my head and not all the subjects resonated me (Victorian, white). The language was poetic, academic, deliberate.
3.5/5
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“Things are like language in this way: form hiding our best approximations. - 45
Taken as a whole, a book has form and content. A form that is often intended to stop signaling its presence so that the ideas it contains can more readily appear. The ideas embodied by the book’s text, and the text enclosed within the book’s exterior — the vehicle through which the inner world is met. And so, a book is both a physical and psychical ‘thing’. It has a container and contained, a weighted physical presence and a weightless drift of ideas. - 47
The book is a body we take into our body. It is one of the things we write ourselves with. - 48
I think that’s how I got into creative writing, the dumb hope that the right word would cast the right amount of shadow and light and say — not just to me but to everyone — exactly what I intended it to say. - 76
TV shows and movies and even a lot of books tend to entertain, they provide escapism, but they don’t propel us into our own imagination. - 77
On the creative process: “Eventually we come to and work through the imaginings in a kind of in-between place that has some semblance of control about it. But for those who do go into Elsewhere, who go past reverie to engage imaginatively with something they can’t quite keep in line, there can be a break or an exit. It can be complex, a sense of fright or the sudden awareness of your heart pounding, or it can be simple: the phone ringing, the kettle whistling, the dog padding into the room. - 80
A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts is an experimental love letter to things, words, self-knowledge, history, portals, entry points, imagination, language. I loved the sections about writing and books. A few ideas went over my head and not all the subjects resonated me (Victorian, white). The language was poetic, academic, deliberate.
3.5/5
————————————
“Things are like language in this way: form hiding our best approximations. - 45
Taken as a whole, a book has form and content. A form that is often intended to stop signaling its presence so that the ideas it contains can more readily appear. The ideas embodied by the book’s text, and the text enclosed within the book’s exterior — the vehicle through which the inner world is met. And so, a book is both a physical and psychical ‘thing’. It has a container and contained, a weighted physical presence and a weightless drift of ideas. - 47
The book is a body we take into our body. It is one of the things we write ourselves with. - 48
I think that’s how I got into creative writing, the dumb hope that the right word would cast the right amount of shadow and light and say — not just to me but to everyone — exactly what I intended it to say. - 76
TV shows and movies and even a lot of books tend to entertain, they provide escapism, but they don’t propel us into our own imagination. - 77
On the creative process: “Eventually we come to and work through the imaginings in a kind of in-between place that has some semblance of control about it. But for those who do go into Elsewhere, who go past reverie to engage imaginatively with something they can’t quite keep in line, there can be a break or an exit. It can be complex, a sense of fright or the sudden awareness of your heart pounding, or it can be simple: the phone ringing, the kettle whistling, the dog padding into the room. - 80
February 23, 2020
A charming collection of experimental essays riffing on the nature of ThingsTM.
September 1, 2014
I will need to read this again (even though I already had to read some of the chapters twice in order to better grasp the complex material at hand). A multi-layered, rich and rewarding read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews