If reading is a passion, then writing about reading is a neurosis. But if one eventually identifies1 with one’s symptom, what began as a neurosis for literature becomes something monastic and significant. The monk will naturally look nonsensical if taken out of context; if we see him transcribing, praying, shaking his head in a museum or a coffee shop rather than in his quarters, we may not even realize that he is a monk at all. Of course, every once in a while, this monk must remember to go outside, to look into people’s faces and think about the days, smell the air — even if it is polluted and hot — watch the insects — even if they are eating each other alive — see the life of the city, its face, and so on, et cetera, et cetera, which is to say that he must take himself out of his own context before returning to the cloister and imbibing on the cool, smuggled draughts that simultaneously disfigure and beautify his soul.
(Responding to an editorial criticism of this word) I would insist on taking advantage of “identification” here because of the symptomatic-identificatory Lacanian concept of sinthome (a portmanteau of '‘symptom’ and ‘Saint Thomas’), to which I am tangentially referring.