Once upon a time, before I became addicted to scroll-by internet reading, I would read at least three books a week. I read old-fashioned but epic travelogues, 800-page biographies of hunky revolutionaries, coolster essays by cooler-than-me contemporaries, Seamus Heaney’s poetry, Calvin Trillin’s food writing, Colette’s (now-prudish) erotica, Corinne Trang’s cookbooks, and every single brilliant story by the ridiculously talented journalist Katherine Boo.
My favorite place to read was outside, on a blanket on the grass or in a big, beefy chair on a wraparound porch. Sometimes I’d bring a flask of tea — Japanese green was my favorite — and my Wonder Bread sandwich-shaped tupperware, which I’d fill with crusty bread, stinky white cheese and crinkly black olives. Due to the cheese and possibly the sinister olives, no one ever approached me. That was just fine. I had to focus every bit of my concentration on deciphering the beautiful, gymnastic sentences in Nabokov’s “Speak, Memory.”
I read not only for the stinky cheese and olives but because I liked to write stories. I read stories that were stratospherically better than anything I could write, but in reading and deconstructing, in imitating and practicing, I figured I could find a bit of my own style.
During all this reading, I worked at a newspaper in North Carolina and then moved to Greece and wrote for more newspapers there. Then newspapers started die, or maybe I just began to notice them dying. I read blogs that chronicled the death of newspapers while simultaneously ripping off their stories. I read about the totally clueless newspaper executives who inexplicably reaped million-dollar bonuses while simultaneously laying off genuinely talented employees. I read about how people hated “The Media” for being high-falutin while noticing that more headlines were about Joe the Plumber and reality TV.
Maybe people just hated reading? I was starting to hate it, too.
During the 2008 campaign, I also spent too much of my free time reading comments on blogs. These were anonymous types who identified themselves as “red-blooded Americans” but wrote as if they’d never learned or even heard of English. I never remembered anything I’d read, even though I had spent hours reading little blurbs, snarky asides and the ALL-CAP RANTS of the aforementioned “red-blooded” idiots.
Would I ever read for real again? I couldn’t tear myself away from the ALL-CAP RANTS, even as they atrophied my brain. Even good blogs couldn’t be good for hours, but I needed the short, scary bursts of distraction. I was doomed. I figured I would become one of those glaze-eyed internet addicts who would have to go to rehab.
I hit the breaking point one late night in Boulder, Colorado, one of the most beautiful places on earth, though I’d barely figured this out yet. It was 3 a.m., and I was up reading pollster blogs and snarkathon babble on the night before the 2008 presidential election while joylessly eating a plate-sized chocolate chip cookie. Why was I doing this? Before coming here on a year-long fellowship, I had dreamed of vigorous days of trail runs and yoga and evening cookathons where I would rediscover the joys of Swiss chard. I’d even brought Nabokov’s autobiography with me and bought a fuzzy, deep-red blanket to spread out for a reunion with the well-edited word and a tupperware of stinky cheese.
“Speak, Memory” was the last non-work-related book I’d read (or re-read, in this case). I’d finished it on my balcony in Athens, tucked into a big, beefy hammock and savoring a cup of Japanese green tea and a plate of bread and wrinkly black olives. (I was out of stinky cheese.)
So that night before the election, I turned off my computer, abandoned that joyless cookie and went to sleep. I’d like to say that I woke up on what turned out to be a glorious election day with a choir of bookworm angels who led me to my forsaken library. But truth is, the literary re-entry took a couple more weeks. But soon I was reading Annie Dillard, Orhan Pamuk, Steve Coll, David Sedaris, Jhumpa Lahiri, Atul Gawande, Leslie Chang. And soon I was also running, biking, hiking and yogablissing. I feel like this was all connected.
Still, I do sometimes indulge in scrolling through the great vast web of internet verbiage. Many of the bloggers are better writers these days — a few are decidedly witty, curious, focused, honest, vibrant, poetic. I have some favorites: Jezebel, Talking Points Memo, Chocolate & Zucchini. But I never scroll on for too long.
Tomorrow, I’m starting “Brick Lane” by Monica Ali, preferably over a cup of coconut-pouchang tea. I’m out of my Japanese green. But life goes on.
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