`It's a Nice Life'

One of the four moving company men who hauled half our belongings to a storage unit on Tuesday and the rest to the house we’ve rented bore an undeniable resemblance to the late, great Curly Howard (né Jerome Lester Horwitz). Mike told me he’s heard that for most of his 35 years, just as I’ve heard the question he asked me: "You read all those books?" I answered with a falsely modest "Most of them," and instead of it ending the conversation, as it customarily does, Mike told me the history of his life with books. This was going on as I checked the numbers labeled on each unloaded box and chair against the inventory sheet, and Mike and the other guys were carrying furniture and wheeling dollies into the house.

Mike was born in Alaska and described himself as "a special ed. kid." He could remember nothing he read. In his teens that changed with his discovery of Jack London. White Fang and The Call of the Wild he read obsessively – dozens of times and, for years, no other books tempted him. In his twenties his tastes grew to include Stephen King, Dean Koontz and W.E.B. Griffin. He shares the reading habits of millions of Americans but for one aberration: He goes months, even a year, unable and unwilling to read anything, and then, abruptly, the drive returns and he orders stacks of books. Mike made an observation that suggested we might have something in common: "I get word-hungry all over again."

I feel the same except my "word-hunger" – a splendid phrase – never abates. I still periodically run a mental-movie, one I’ve screened since childhood: I’m in a prison cell with bare gray walls and no reading matter, ever. I tickle myself with desolation in this private act of masochism, and I don’t know why I do it except that it feels good when I remember I can reach over and pull Catullus or Henry James off the shelf.

Two years ago, Marilynne Robinson gave a wide-ranging interview (supplied by Brain Sholis) at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Asked about her reading habits, Robinson says:

"That is so mysterious. I get something in my mind or I pick up a book that seems to call my name [Mike said Jack London’s books were "calling my name"], and I read something I didn’t know before or something that makes a better text, a better fabric of something I had known for some other reason. And it just feels good. It’s an enormous pleasure to me. If I could, I would just read and read and read. All kinds of strange things. Difficult things that make me feel that my perspective is richer than it was before. As far as writing goes, every once in a while I feel like I have to write something. I am the driven slave of these two impulses. It’s a nice life."