Obsessed with Words

Sometimes it seems I am obsessed with print. When I'm not juggling a book or two, I'm trying to catch up on a handful of periodicals that often devote significant space (if not all of it) to book reviews. And when I'm not reading these things, I'm digging deeper into the New York Times to make sure I didn't miss anything essential, usually from their opinionator columns or from, well, yes, that's right, the Book Review. It almost seems as if I am really obsessed with important texts I can't possibly get to, at least for now, but that must be placed on some mental list of must-reads for that future time when I will have the leisure to leaf through some weighty but important 300-page tome about, say, scarcity and what it does to us.

In other words, while I do feel a need to be reading all the time, which is part of the obsession I have tried to capture above, what I'm really sort of tortured by is the book that got away. You know, that book I should have been reading, not so much because I can talk about it at cocktail parties, since, actually, I don't go to any cocktail parties, but that book which will finally and definitively supply me with all the answers to all those knotty questions that the world keeps posing to me and, of course, lots of other people as well. 

You know, questions having to do with the best ways to finally eliminate hunger, poverty and disease. Or questions about what it means to live a truly nonviolent life. Or questions about how to make the best possible case for why a liberal arts education is a good thing even though it may not lead to a high salary and secure employment. And, sure, questions, too, about how to figure out which play or movie to see that will result in the best use of my time given my family's limited budget.

I guess what I'm saying is that I read primarily to become a better person, maybe not in a personal and everyday way, but more in a moral and what's at stake for the world way. In essence, I am always trying to figure out how to live, and I look to books to help me make sense of this.

Maybe. Maybe that's why I read. No, no, let me put that another way. That is definitely one of the reasons why I read, but it may not be the main reason. I read now more than ever for a surprising reason, a reason that has gripped me in the last few years and even now takes me by surprise. I read primarily because I like words. I like how they look and how they sound and what they do when they are pushed up against each other. I am especially attracted to writers who do interesting things with words, though I don't read writers who separate sound from sense. I'm still looking for a good story and some good lessons about, well, you know, about how to live, but I want it done in an artful manner, but not too artful. I don't want it to be arty that is. I want it to be artistic and interesting and even kind of daring, but not so different that I become lost and disengaged and unable to stay awake.

Books don't usually put me to sleep. Unfortunately, I am more likely to fall asleep watching movies and plays, because I still lack that ideal guide who will lead me to all the shows perfectly matched to my tastes. In the case of books, I don't mind difficult texts. I like having to reread sentences, especially if they're really good sentences. Then I like to underline them and consider them more closely and say them out loud to see how they sound. When words are good, when they cogently capture some wonderful point, there isn't anything quite as satisfying. Which is not to say I could sit around reading individual sentences all day long, because most really good sentences need a context, a narrative to make them work. So I just love it when I spot a good sentence inside something really interesting that I'm reading, because it makes me think about how good sentences get formed and pushes me to try to compose two or three.

But it's hard to write good sentences, as you can tell from what you have just read. There probably isn't one really good sentence in this whole piece. Which drives me to go back to my books and my magazines, so that I can find one really terrific sentence to make my ongoing obsession for more print ultimately worthwhile.