Why the Wingback Workshop?
It occurred to me that I should answer the question that not one person has ever asked me, in person or online: Why the Wingback? Why the Wingback Workshop?
The Wingback
In the summer of 2023, I was on the Harvard campus as part of my master's degree in English (waves to fellow Division of Continuing Education students like a big dork). It was rainy the first few days I was there, so I took refuge in Widener Library. Since it was summer, the big reading room was little used, so I could snag the same chair in the back corner by the window every day while I waited for the rain to stop so I could walk back to where I was staying.
I don't come from wingback people; my people are more recliner people. I can't think of a living room when I was growing up that didn't have two recliners and a couch. This is TV watching furniture, made for leaning back and looking forward. If I lie on a couch to read, I know I am fooling myself. I'm really there to nap; the book is a pretense.
The chairs in Widener were gray, vaguely modern, very sturdy wingbacks arranged around low tables. This was obviously furniture mass-produced for hard use by students, but the chairs were surprisingly comfy. I spent hours in my chosen favorite reading for a class on the post-World War II novel while the rain came down in sheets. That is how I discovered the magic of reading in wingback chairs: upright enough to be supportive, but you can't get too slouchy or curled up in it. There's enough cushioning to sit for hours, but not enough to make you sleepy. Depending on the size of the wingback's wings, they can work like blinders to keep you from seeing other people moving around the room.
When I got back home, I began a search for my own wingback chair and settled on a Chippendale-style chair from the 1990s (is that vintage or just used?) reupholstered in gold silk that would look fantastic in the spare room upstairs. I knew my animals would wreck the upholstery, but I bought it anyway. They've only wrecked it a little. The wings are bigger than those on the Harvard chairs, which is good for feeling enclosed and engrossed in my reading and bad because they do give me enough space to lean my head against them and doze off. This invariably makes my neck hurt.
The platonic ideal of the wingback as a reading chair is the reason for this newsletter's name. You don't have to have an actual wingback for reading, just like you don't have to have a paper book or a home library. Anyplace that helps you focus on reading and thinking is great. Someplace where you can forget about any other people moving around the room. If there's a window or something where you can give your eyeballs a break while you think about what you just read, all the better. If you have a lap desk and notepad nearby, you're fucking golden.
The Workshop
When I moved this newsletter away from Substack, I had a notebook full of plans. I want to add extra newsletters, readers' guides, a shop, a link blog, and more. The idea is the this virtual place will be more than just a newsletter, more than just a wingback chair.
But then what do you call it? My own office is a shed in the backyard; that doesn't sound cool. I do like the Italian word studiolo, and the French atelier is one of my favorites. Calling this The Wingback Atelier sounds like I make fancy furniture. Maybe I do make fancy furniture...of the mind.
Nothing brings language back to earth like some old-fashioned Old English-inspired consonance, though Old English uses the w as a vowel. Anyway, once I hit on The Wingback Workshop, it made sense to me. I could picture a wingback chair in a workshop with tools for building and writing and rough wooden tables and stacks of books—I have a very visual brain.
Now I'm picturing a few wingbacks placed about the workshop, since I want to build a small community of readers who are interested in reading for the sake of considering. We're not here to meet reading challenges or make page goals. Reading speed does not matter; fast and slow readers alike are welcome in the workshop. Readers who haven't read anything substantial (in literary terms, not necessarily in page count) since high school are as welcome as lifelong lit nerds.
We're working on things in the workshop. We're working shit out in the workshop. We're doing the work of letting literature be "the axe for the frozen sea inside us," as Kafka wrote in a letter to his childhood friend. Now I'll picture an axe on one of those tables next to a wingback chair, ready for any of us to pick it up and get chopping.
A long answer to a question you did not ask. But welcome to the Wingback Workshop anyway.
You can buy all of KHG’s books and those she recommends at Bookshop.org.