Let me tell you how I read.
I read like a voracious person who fears commitment -- which is to say, effectively. Maybe you don’t care about me and my life, and just want Instruction, so I will tell you the steps, right up front: I read the middle of the book, out, towards the end (sometimes, I even sneak a peek at the last page--screw spoiler alerts). Then, (if the writer manages to keep my attention, and I am pretty finicky), I go back to the very beginning (the iv and xii - the Roman Numeral pages) and read the Introduction. Usualy, that’s written by Some One Else, often writing long after the day the book was originally published, and that gives me an objective voice. Then I look at all the tiny marginalia, like the Frontispiece, and the copyrights (how old? how many printings?) and the geeky stuff like the Publishing House and their location and their Imprint and logo and font. Finally, if am hooked, I start the book all over again. Chapter One. And like any good commitment resister, I Hate myself just a bit. Here I am, doing it again: I’m reading a book. I mean, haven’t I read enough already at this point in my life? I mean, won’t I ever learn?
I get mad at myself, and can’t stop. It is far more relaxing to read than to watch a movie or a show on Netflix. Time is......huh? Especially a laundromat book (it was just there), a stoop book, a mutt book.
Take this morning. I wanted to throw out a copy of Butterfield8 by John O’Hara (noir, Depression Era, not my favorite genre, couldn’t care less). It wasn’t a book I bought -- I probably found it on a stoop somewhere, a couple of years ago, and yesterday, while cleaning up, decided to let it go back to the Stoop gods. Today was the day. But it was raining today, so I couldn’t quite leave it out. I went to lock the front door of the building, and I dropped the book on the ground (why? are there Stoop gods? did they stop me?). My hands were too full. My umbrella made it hard to re-lock the door and hold the book. I hadn’t had coffee. Digusted, I just left it by the door, determined to figure out a plan for how to jettison it...later.
So I return. With half-drunk coffee. With the rain kind of subsiding, but not enough to keep the book from turning into a soggy, unappealing Stoop Giftlump on my building’s front steps (were I to leave it out), knowing that I would have to bury its soggy corpse myself in a wastebin tomorrow, anyway, and throwing out books is Not Fun.
So, Dear Reader, I read it.
I read half (see Procedure, Above) as predicted; I drank more coffee. I ate a tiny and amazing croissant. The day was dreary as dreary can be during Covid in Brooklyn. And two blissful hours passed.
At first: The Mutt book didn’t impress me; then it totally blew me away. It inspired me as a writer, and incensed me as a woman (the way society was back in the ‘30s, ugh! all that dame-in-a-mink-coat stuff). Its tone was so unapologetic it made me feel strong. The Introduction (by Fran Lebowitz, how delicious?!) was full of praise, but qualified praise. Overall, I felt Okay to Read Something That Did Not Make Me Feel Comfortable. Something that Did Not Define Me as Me.
These days -- where search engine optimization, and confirmation bias, and Netflix cues skewed to show me only more and more of what I like (or, of what makes Netflix money) are the norm -- a Mutt Read, a “guilty” book, is pretty damned tonifying. Yup, my brain still works. I can feel the fact that my own comfort (thanks, but no thanks, Google algorithms) is not so important or as delicate as they say. In fact, I’m free -- and what’s more, I’m hungry. I feel the necessity for feeding my brain-oats through my eyes / aka/ for the old-school act of reading a book by an author whose name is actually on the spine.
