Quiz

What Type of ReaderAre You?
Score: 0-100 

The Romantic Mystic. You most enjoy recreational activities that allow you to exercise vigorously in an investigative, minimally competitive, reversible game involving a searchof some kind, prefering to read at your leisure that which employs the seductive forces of Nature to tease your senses. You appreciate a writer's acknowledgement of those larger forces that surround us, particularly those of lighting and weather, and you have a secret affinity for animals of all kinds, always searching for the power animal within you. When it comes to reading, you are looking for writing that celebrates Nature with a disregard for synthetic modes of thinking. You believe that all things are potentially equal, including works of literature, that is, if the natural inclinations of the text are not misdirected by the evil forces of human social structures.You enjoy that which provides you with a broad perspective, one that is preferably not polluted by the striating forces of human progress. You are happiest amid the simple and the pastoral, drawing much of what you value most from direct encounters with plant life or writing that relies heavily on an artful recreationof such natural images. You deplore hierarchical approaches to classifying the natural or human worlds--which you maintain as strictly divided from one another. Sparsely populated landscapesgive you a comforting feeling of significance, which gives you the confidence to immerse yourself in whatever world be rendered in the books that you read. You prefer to breathe in your reading material, deferring critique and judgement so as to allow for what you deam to be the most direct means of engagement. Because of this, you have the ability to experience through writing that sublime moment of cosmic awareness that writers like Wordsworth attempt to recreatein their poetry. You prefer to read at a slow pace, enjoying most those texts that obscure their larger aims or supporting structures with florid language.
In fact, your type bears the burden of a wanderlust that is quite compatible with the nonlinear and distracting nature of literature composed in hypermedia. You might wish to just simply jump into this site via the toolbar to your left, scrolling through the alphabetical list of keywords. However, if you need a guide of some kind to ease you in your journey, I would recommend you start by avoiding those chapters that focus heavily on the alluring nature of cityscapes and interiors (a rather large concern of this project in fact), focusing on those passagesmarked by the following keywords:

absence of mind alphabet anchors backgroundsbarnes book constellations death disseminationdiversion dwelling end exteriority forces guidehieroglyphics home intoxication labyrinths lightingmagic minotaur myth narcissus navigation noveltyobsession omission paths poe presence of mindprostitution quotation reading recreation refrainritual ruins search seduction serres smoothe spacespiders sublime thread threshold traces typeswandering weather webs
In this way, it is possible for you to read through this project without consciously compromising your prejudices against the synthetic world, despite the synthetic nature of the medium in which this project is presented. Thus, you may become yet another example of that very same self-deluding fantastic approach to any text that makes the Romantic Mystic so lovable.

Score: 100-200

The Urban Observer. You are a natural reader of the streets and a lover of the artistic act, be it intentional or otherwise, especially when it takes place in the highly stimulating context of an urban center. The more cluttered, crammed and populated a city street, the more enjoyable. For recreation, you prefer to enrich your mind with stimulating visuals. A walk to the post office may be your finest form of intellectual entertainment, if it presents you with an opportunity to watch the people you pass, ingesting with a hearty appetite the lustrous history of each gesture, each garment, each accidental signal of the private life awaiting them at home. To you, the eyes are humankind's most valuable organ, providing you with all the raw material you need to construct great hypothetical dramas in your imagination about the people and things that pass through the searchlight of your open gaze. A natural flaneur, you would do best to dwell in places and engage texts that are filled a variety of characters, brightly distracting advertisements, shop signs, conversations, window treatments, bits of debris, stimulating weather, and things for sale. While reading is one way you instruct your imagination to produce elaborate and convincing stories about those passing strangers you encounter amid the groan of city traffic, you might be better off tossing the books aside and spending an evening at the cinema, for you have a profound love of all things visual and the ability to fasten onto even the most fleeting image a personal significance that adds color to even the dullest scenes. A natural parasite, feeding almost vampirically on all you encounter, you require very little in the way of possessions; indeed, you are more than likely a Marxist, spurning the life of the interiorand all of its possessive glory. Home is where you hang your hat, and for this reason, you seem to own whatever city will take you, own it intellectually and through your readings of it, own it physically through your willingness to engage it on the microcosmic level.
For this reason, you will do well to engage this project wholly on your own, allowing whatever image or catch phrase or distracting reference that grabs you be your guide; however, I would recommend that you keep a pencil in hand (or an electronic substitute) as it is often only in writing about your intellectual encounters that you come to truly enjoy the wealth your perceptive nature affords. Be sure not to miss the following passages that engage your type directly:
anderson arcades project a une passantebackgrounds barnes boulevards cafe canettichance/encounters collecting diversion dwellingecclecticism encounters flaneur flaneuse guideinterruption intoxication labyrinths navigationnovelty parasite passages passengers paths poepresence of mind randomness reading recreationrepetition ritual ruins search seduction spacesurfaces target text thread threshold typeswandering weather webs
Of course, it is not as though you could be trusted to follow any map, but at least the above itinerary will supply you with a structure from which you can be distracted. Enjoy your journey.

Score: 200-300

The Junkie (a.k.a.: The Lover). You can't get enough of the chronic, can you? If it feels good, you will be its slave. This doesn't mean necessarily that you are a worthless and lazy individual (though that is often the case). As we all know, many of the world's most esteemed artists were smokers, drinkers, drug users--addicts of one kind or another. Perhaps it is your love of the senses that guides you above all other things, turning what may be for other people a mere affinity into a soul-clutching obsession. Indeed it may be that your capacity for love in general sets you up to become addicted to all sorts of substances, behaviors, activities, etc. What you want more than anything is to consume what you find appealing--taste it, drink it, digest it and synthesize it into yourself. For you there are no casual encounters: you learn by becoming, and oftentimes the intensity with which you experience even the most seemingly insignificant situation is far greater that what others might achieve in a rare moment of epiphany. You seek above all a kind of spiritual union with the world that surrounds you. To take in a moment, ingest it, and make it part of yourself, you will cycle through a maddening number of repetitiousencounters with the loved substance/person/text/thing. It is only through this all-encompassing type of approach that you can give yourself over to what seduces you. To be disembodied, to move freely through the world in which you dwell, absorbing everything all at once, this is your station in life and while it is a station with great creative rewards--rewards of a vision informed by immersion, amplification, and an almost surreal enhancement of sensory stimuli--it also bears with it the danger of a complete anihilation and eternal loss of a conceivable "self." Of course, this doesn't bother you, as it is merely the price of a cosmic perspective.
You prefer texts that enable you to appreciate a new form of awareness--dream-like texts that hyperbolize, symbolize, and intensely engage the senses. Because of your highly addictive nature and your desire to becomes completely overtaken by whatever it is you ingest, I would recommend you avoid the passage labeled end, as on it there is a link to a flash version of a particularly addictive classic arcade game in the upper right hand corner of that page. Consider yourself warned.
As for appropriate reading material for your type, you may wish to start by exploring the following:
A
absence of mind aquariums arcades project a une passante barnes bibliographybook cafe death dissemination diversion flaneurflaneuse forces gambling games guide interiorityintoxication labyrinths lighting magic messagesminotaur myth narcissus network noveltyobsession parasite passengers paths poe presence of mind randomness reading recreation refrainrepetition ritual ruins search seduction sublimesurfaces surrealism target threshold undergroundwandering weather webs

Of course, one might point out that everything that is is intoxicating, that the "self" as humans have traditionally defined it (i.e.: Emerson) is really just an effect of ignoring the permeability of our boundaries. While you may wish to limit yourself to the selection of passages listed above, it is more likely than not that you will stumble on something that grabs hold of your impressive imagination, luring you off into another world entirely. (P.S.: Junkies always have an obsessionwith the destruction their beloved substance provokes. For that reason, the passage entitled zero may be of interest to you as well.)

Score: 300-400

The Well-Read Narcissist. Based on your ten answers to the ten questions that comprise this test, you are most definitely one of those people who knows everything and isn't afraid to let people know because you worked so damned hard to know it. How deserving you are of the praise and admiration of your audience. You cannot stand to simply sit and muse, to let your mind wander freely over the textured ripples of a sun swept sky--nor are you at ease engaging in medial tasks such as mindless games. You want your texts to be challenging in the traditional sense: preferably comprised of words bound in the form of a book and, even more preferably, stamped with the seal of some ivy league instution and, even much more preferably, marked with a clever, ironic, or comically difficult title written in large letters, big enough to see from a distance. Ah, yes. The book industry would shrivel like a raisin were it not for your type, seen sitting alone in public, book/stack of books in hand.  As much as you like to read and stimulate your own mind with that which has been deemed relevent by the power structures that be, you also enjoy being seen as the person who reads with ease the kinds of books that the average cofffee house intellectual only dreams of comprehending: the denser, the more challenging, the better. Your most admirable quality is your work ethic and your ability to remained focused, to read book after book to its end. Your vocabulary dwarfs that of those around you and you are often surrounded by people who only hope to one day boast your literary and philosophic repetoire. A very attentive listener, you experience the world through language above all else which makes you a very entertaining conversationalist--or perhaps we should say, a fascintating linguistic performance artist, since you usually do most of the talking. Regardless of where you physically reside, it is always the language that seduces you first. If it hasn't been scribbled on or written about, it does not exist for you, though chances are, if you have stumbled upon something you have never before seen written about, you've probably made note of it in your journal. Your type usually bears the gift of gab, both in speech and in writing. Skilled and talented in the art of rhetoric, your summaries of texts are often more beautifully rendered than the texts themselves. There is just one problem: you will probably not enjoy this project so much. You prefer the book, in all its glorious portability and unelectric elegance. If you haven't already dismissed what is going on here because of the light-hearted nature of this "quiz" (a joke that you of all the types are least likely to get, by the way) then I would recommend skimming through the longer, denser, more heavily researched, less interactive, more language-focused and polished sections of this project. The following sections read more like the scholarly articles your type is so often heard reducing to a witty line or two:

arcades project
a une passante
book
collecting 
flaneur 
passengers 
poe 
presence of mind 
repetition 
seduction 
spiders 
traces 
weather

However, in all honesty, you will probably be most content reading what you find here--in the bibliography.

Score: 400-500

The Gambler. The Internet was made for people like you, the risk takers, the rollercoaster riders, the here-and-nowers. Yes indeed, you are at homein cyberspace where chance and intution are your only guides through labyrinths of textualpossibility. Your type is actually despicable far its rather shocking level of commitment to personal gain and pleasure. Above all else, you strive to win--to, through the impressive strength of your skill and highly developed intuitive sense, defeat your contesters and return to the nearest bar with pockets full. Sadly, though, the feeling of achievement always fades, forcing you into the same detrimental situation repeatedly enough to witness the turning of the tables. You stand on the threshold between poverty and wealth, victory and defeat, now and eternity. With spider-sensitive hands and probing eyes, you take extend your locus like a web, sensing the vibrations of each opponent, catching the most subtle indication of hopeless weakness or dooming strength. Much like the Urban Observer, your idea of reading extends far beyond language and into the world of things and events. Statistical probabilities, likelihoods, odds, chances...a quivering lip, a clammy brow, a flush of redness, a too-interested look: these are your books. It is in such theories, things and happenings that you read most feverishly the secret underside of the here and now. Of course, unlike the Urban Observer who reads for the pleasure of readingalone, your type invested with relative personal risk. Your reading is directed always toward personal gain. No "art for art's sake" for you...you're going for the 7-digit contract with Time-Warner. If there is nothing to be gained--and just as importantly nothing to be lost, why then, you are not interested. Much like the Romantic Mystic, your type thrives on its quest for that sublime moment of awe-inspiring danger, between the moment when the dice is cast and the moment when it falls back. Something must be at stake to draw you in. Uncertainly and chancemust float above tightly structured surfaces. There must be rules--a game--and a reason to play.
As a gambler, you are a natural psychologist, capable through your lightening quick intuition of derriving a character's entire history from a few surface evident clues or hints. Thus you may be interested in the passages on keywords and typesas they may supply you with useful information for future opponent reading. As for your experience of this project, I would say to let intuition be your guide, (it's not as though you would ever do otherwise) selecting from the list of keywords those passages that seem most interesting to you. I will warn you that the passage entitled "Gambling" may present some problems to you if you have a difficult time dealing with online casinos, as one can be accessed through the link at the upper left-hand corner of the page. Allow me to strongly caution you against clicking there.  As for other sections of this project that deal with the subject of gambling or those subjects that closely resemble it, they are listed below:
absence of mind anchors aquariums a une passante chance chance/encounters constellationscontainment death departures displaydissemination diversion encounters end exteriorityframes forces gambling games guide intoxicationkeywords labyrinths magic minotaur mythnarcissus novelty obsession presence of mindprostheses prostitution randomness readingrecreation repetition ritual rules search seductionspiders stakes strategy structure target thresholdtypes zero

Good luck.


ANNOTATIONS:

See Romantic Vagrancy by ___________ for more on your types connection to some of the other focuses of this project.

The project after which this project is named--The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin is intensely focused on your particular type. You may wish to read the section convolute ______ which deals directly with the type of the flaneur, the fancy French word for the urban observer.

See Deleuze-Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus for more on the interconnected-ness of everything or Derrida's Dissemination for more on the intoxicating effect of the other, especially with regard to language.