Bathroom reading

[2] Writing in the 18th century, the English statesman Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield reported that he knew "a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets, in those moments.

In 2011, the Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote: Bathroom reading is a certain kind of reading—episodic, but encouraging first thing in the morning.

[6] In James Joyce's novel Ulysses, the protagonist Leopold Bloom reads a magazine on the toilet and then wipes himself with it.

"[10] The psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel believed bathroom reading was an indication of early childhood trauma.

He wrote that the activity is "an attempt to preserve the equilibrium of the ego; part of one's bodily substance is being lost and so fresh matter must be absorbed through the eyes.

"[4] James Strachey, who translated Freud's works into English, similarly noted that the activity of casual reading while defecating was essentially "infantile" behavior.