References

They refer to the literature as a "body". So if we consider "surveying the literature", it's similar to a body scan (from Jon Kabat-Zinn), to body awareness, the first step of the Anapanasati Sutta. (Cf. http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Anapanasati/Anapanasatisuttam-2.htm) So in terms of the sutra:


 * While breathing in long, he knows “I am breathing in long”, while breathing out long, he knows “I am breathing out long”.

What is long? In terms of the literature, maybe it's a book-length piece. M. S. Knowles, "The modern practice of adult education: From pedagogy to andragogy". M. Tennant, "Psychology and adult learning". E. Wenger, "Toward a theory of cultural transparency: Elements of a social discourse of the visible and invisible". Carl Bereiter, "Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age". It is in some ways bad form to cite a long book in a paper, I think, since you impose on your reader. Will they have actually read the "long exhalation" in question?


 * The hag, who had placed the costly gift of Arbaces in the loose folds of her vest, now rose to depart. When she had gained the door she paused, turned back, and said, 'This may be the last time we meet on earth; but whither flieth the flame when it leaves the ashes?--Wandering to and fro, up and down, as an exhalation on the morass, the flame may be seen in the marshes of the lake below; and the witch and the Magian, the pupil and the master, the great one and the accursed one, may meet again. Farewell!' -- The Last Days of Pompeii, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1834.


 * "Options, arrivals, the long exhalation (rubato) accompanying departure through this or that between-realities doorslit or turn-aside pathway." (http://waxbanks.typepad.com/blog/2006/07/options_arrival.html)


 * The woman, who looks as bewildered as I feel, hands a slip of pink paper to the driver, and hurredly explains in one long exhalation, I'm a friend of your daughter and her husband, Sandra couldn't be here to pick you up, she had to go somewhere and she'll be back soon, so she sent me to take you home. -- Anaya M. Baker, http://anayambaker.hubpages.com/hub/Short-Story-Beatrice

Conversely:


 * The slang term "bogarting" refers to taking an unfairly long time with a cigarette, drink, et cetera, that is supposed to be shared (e.g., "Don't bogart that joint!"). It derives from Bogart's style of cigarette smoking, with which he left his cigarette dangling from his mouth rather than withdrawing it between puffs. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Bogart


 * While breathing in short, he knows “I am breathing in short”, while breathing out short, he knows “I am breathing out short”.

Short is a little one-off piece; maybe even something that's common knowledge. Maybe it's a gasp of sorts, still, unless you are writing in a well-constrained and well-demarcated domain, you can't expect people to have read anything you're citing. Perhaps more likely, a sort of shibboleth, or else a buzz-word.


 * "Hazel, you've been a part of me forever. Don't you know that? I breathe your name on every exhalation." Caden Cotard, in "Synechdoche, NY"

If it is too much to ask people to read the work in question (which I think almost always is), then you have to summarize it in the literature review. Some of these works represent a flash of inspiration for you. Maybe a sort of "intersection point" where something weird happens.


 * “You can cut into The Naked Lunch at any intersection point,” says Burroughs. [...] His book, he means, is like a neighborhood movie with continuous showings that you can drop into whenever you please—you don’t have to wait for the beginning of the feature picture. Or like a worm that you can chop up into sections each of which wriggles off as an independent worm. Or a nine-lived cat. Or a cancer. He is fond of the word “mosaic,” especially in its scientific sense of a plant-mottling caused by a virus, and his Muse (see etymology of “mosaic”) is interested in organic processes of multiplication and duplication. The literary notion of time as simultaneous, a montage, is not original with Burroughs; what is original is the scientific bent he gives it and a view of the world that combines biochemistry, anthropology, and politics. -- Mary McCarthy, writing in New York Review of Books, 1963, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1963/feb/01/dejeuner-sur-lherbe/


 * Each word is transmuted by the alchemy of arrangement. Brightly colored beetles move and shift in a glittering mosaic of Mandarin complexity. -- William Burroughs, jacket blurb on Irving Rosenthal's "Sleeper"


 * He trains like this: experiencing the whole body I will breathe in, he trains like this: experiencing the whole body I will breathe out.

In any case, this body is our home; we can imagine a pastoral or an industrial landscape, but in fact the truth is, if anything, much more complicated. We can see this when cut in via Google search. It seems that just going to a certain section of the library is not enough.


 * I know all the various arts and crafts and sciences in the world dealing with writing, mathematics and symbols, physiology, rhetoric, physical and mental health, city planning, architecture and construction, mechanics and engineering, divination, agriculture and commerce, conduct and manners, good and bad actions, good and bad principles, what makes for felicity and what for misery, what is necessary for enlightenment, and behavior linking reason and action. I know all these sciences, and I also introduce them and teach them to people, and get people to study and practice them, to master and develop them, using these as means to purify, refine, and broaden people. -- From the Flower Ornament Scripture (Avatamsaka-sutra), translated by Thomas Cleary


 * He trains like this: making the bodily process calm I will breathe in, he trains like this: making the bodily process calm I will breathe out.

So we look for the purpose of all of this. I think it is partly to get comfortable doing work: it's not just a matter of endless literary machinations and remixing. This seems a poor conclusion to my essay, so I will instead close with the following...

= Recommended Reading =


 * http://speculativeheresy.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/contingency-and-absolutization-of-the-one.pdf
 * http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max?currentPage=all
 * http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/witold-gombrowicz-and-to-hell-with-culture/