Yellowdaisy4, 1/23

I found the concept of tmesis to be really interesting because while reading or watching or listening, I never really realized that I had been making connections and “reading between the lines” throughout the whole text. Barthes way of describing tmesis was kind of like seeing a strip show and just taking a peak and then letting your mind do the resting of the thinking. Texts are far more fascinating if you let yourself “pervert” it so you stray from the normal way it’s read and “rewrite” it for yourself. The “short story” exercise really helped explain the concept because we were able to actually see how our minds take text and transform it into anything we want or connect it to something completely different. I didn’t think that just adding things to the phrase “short story” would create this image of a bookstore. Then, by adding the phrase “baby shoes”, it created a whole movie in my head about a woman who couldn’t have a baby and was devastated. It was fun to see how everyone else in the class used tmesis and made it something different. This displayed Barthes quote of how “the author cannot predict tmesis” (109) because no one knew how everyone would respond to just seeing those words.
I also found the quote that stated “from one reading to the next, we never skip the same passage” (109) to be very true especially regarding movies. When I first saw “Fight Club”, I was so confused at the ending and thought it was kind of out of nowhere and something that no one could have predicted. However, when I watched it again knowing the ending, I was shocked to see so many moments where I just completely missed or didn’t pick up on that gave so many clues of how the story would turn out. Another example is the second “Austin Powers” movie. I have seen that movie countless times however I feel like every time I watch it, I pick up on another hilarious joke that my mind must have just skipped over or that I didn’t get before.
The differences of “writerly and readerly “texts definitely apply to how I go about reading certain things. If it is a “writerly text” which is something that inspires us to rewrite what we are reading, then I more incline to read it or remember and like what I’m reading like a good novel for example. However if something is a “readerly text” which is designed to keep us from straying as little as possible from the text, like instructions for example, then it’s really hard to keep my attention. Usually when reading something like instructions, my mind wanders so much even though it’s not suppose to, and I have to go back and read it again and again because I completely forgot what I read to begin with. Yet, sometimes “readerly texts” like lists can be helpful because I need to keep my mind on one track so I get things done that need to be done so not straying from the text helps.