Naked Book Reading: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

This piece comes my way via Ananova.com.

Naked book reading

A book about naturism in East Germany is being promoted with a naked book reading.

East Germans were famous for naturism before the fall of the Berlin Wall, happily stripping off at summer nudist camps, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Now author Thomas Kupfermann has written a book about the subject, compiling snapshots and memories from leading lights in the naturist movement.

The sold-out naked reading at a bookshop in north-eastern Germany will be shrouded in heavy curtains to prevent onlookers ogling the audience.

Bookshop owner Helmut Maass has encouraged those attending to dress up warmly and only disrobe on arrival, due to the chilly conditions.

He insists that despite the date, the naked presentation is no April Fool’s joke.

Now I really think that this is a plan and program for the renewal of book reading in the United States. Indeed, the salvation of English departments. I’m sure our classes would fill to overflowing if we designed courses in naturist reading. How is reading different performed in the nude? How does clothing restrict the free flow of creative response to literature? Not to mention the free flow of other things.

[Incidental side-note: it's pretty easy to come up with pics of female nudes reading books from high and pop art, including the two added to this site. I suppose porn as well, but I didn't try those sites. I SWEAR! Just whatever google images calls up. However, try as I might, I can't find male equivalents. Arty male nudes in all kinds of poses chaste and obscene, but nary a book in sight. I suspect this tells me something...but what?

[Anyhoo...given the lack of choices from the world of art, I posed for this tasteful self-portrait. Heh, heh.]

Now here’s a stretch, but I have to say that a naturist book club meeting is testimony yet again to the enduring popularity of plain old books. I mean, can you imagine a naturist meeting at your local internet cafe. What would be the point.?Half the people would be surreptitiously surfing pornography anyway.

Also no art works out there at all of nudes with ebooks and computers (now, watch, I’ll be deluged). I think with good reason. Techie types are given to adjectives and metaphors likely to leave the naturist ill at ease. Things like “razor-thin” or “razor-sharp” or “cutting edge”. Words you aren’t going to want in the general vicinity of….well…the general vicinity of the…ahem…region where we find the book in my aforementioned self-portrait. Too many hard edges and sharp corners in the new-fangled technology.

The unforgiving snap of the machine as it closes also unsettles the mind. My very uneducated guess is that the paperback is the naturist text delivery technology of choice.