Lit Lover

I have always been able to gush, cower, look stern or whatever was needed to give credibility to the words I offer people. Look confident, yes sir! Win friends and influence people, as they say. Let me look you in the eye and win you over, persuade you into indulging in word desserts.

It’s my best feature, the best aspect of my personality. Not only can I ruffle your feathers in a good way; I can also turn up your volume, excite you, make you want more. How I achieve this is my secret, but no human is harmed in the process. Guaranteed. If you give me a moment, you won’t be sorry, because you will never be the same again. Words worm their ways into hearts and minds, and mine will lever hurt you.

This is all possible because I am a ball of fire when I’m around words and their syllables, morphemes and allomorphs, phonemes and allophones, diphthongs and clitics. And that’s just the half of it. If we were to venture into syntax, clauses and declensions, you might begin to melt with pleasure in the same way. At least, I hope you might. Think about it: language is the most human ability. When we use it, we’re being as human as we can possibly be. Yelling and shrieking don’t count. This is about human speech, and it’s oh so pleasurable…

I am proof of what linguistic power means. It’s more than casual conversation, however. Words need a purpose; if they meander, they tend to dissipate in the end. I absolutely glow when I’m around books or any place words gather. And by glow, I mean I get red-hot, although I always keep this under control. Books are gatherings of words with a purpose, so keep that in mind. Books are sacred beings, affectionate companions, life vests. They keep us from going under if worn properly.

What caused my condition, you might be asking. It’s no mystery, even if few people have it. I hear words and their books in my dreams, I sleep with them nearly every night. I know their every vertebra and then some. They are my passion.

The reason for this passion is that early on I discovered how books are better than people. Definitely. They might disappoint you, but they can’t betray you. They can’t break your heart, make a fool of you, criticize you. Books can’t do any of those mean things because they’re just paper and words, folded and stuck together. They don’t slap or scream or curse. They can curl up next to you or breathe softly, on your chest, if need be. Like a beloved dog or cat, with no veterinary bills.

Why do I insist on this? Books certainly aren’t sentient beings. Anything and everything we find in them was (1) put there by the author; and (2) brought there by us, the readers. They are a meeting-place of minds, a site of transformation. Some would call them magic, but magic is for children and doesn’t exist, even if it’s a nice thought. 

The only way to understand the magic is to remove everything you’ve read from your head. No Mother Goose, no Goosebumps or Nancy Drew, no Little House on the Prairie, no Shakespeare, no Stephen King. For others, it would mean erasing Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Dickinson, Sarah Orne Jewett, William Carlos Williams. (Those are just some that come to mind.) A lack of literature, of reading, is tantamount to a life without cheese, chocolate, jalapeños, or salt and pepper. Sad.

It’s what is inside books that complicates the matter, of course. (Note, please, that I’m thinking strictly of literature, meaning fiction, verse, essay, drama, all creative writing. We are not concerned about local news articles or evaluations of the stock market. No reporting, only creating.) The complication comes from all the twists and turns literature adds to our lives. 

Oh, I’m already starting to drool, just thinking about running my tongue over a page, savoring every morsel, swooning over anaphora and metonymy, or just a simple onomatopoeia. Those aren’t everybody’s cup of tea, but they’re so luscious. Hungry.

What’s inside books is thus what has determined my career path, has turned me into a professional word lover. I starve without words, my throat feels as slaked as the ancient mariner’s. But I refuse to bite my arm and suck my blood, because no book has ever - ever! - been my albatross. Craving, they call it. Gluttony. Need.

Because I have this condition, I have had to carve out a niche for myself and have even begun doing a bit of catering. (More on that later.) My deepest desire is to live off of, feed off of, words. Literary ones, in case a reminder is necessary. 

In order to feed my passion, I have developed a resume which I will summarize below. This is still incomplete, because new venues are occurring to me all the time. I utilize my skill at doing literary criticism or critiques whenever possible. This brings solace, amusement, and even camaraderie to people. They pay me for this service and I don’t tell them I’m not a trained literary critic; I just act like one.

The effect is the same. I summarize works for them, lull them to sleep, make laugh. My work is just as valuable as that of a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard or Yale. More valuable, because I bring words to real people. 

Some of my experience includes:

Weddings. I attend them as an invited guest and provide a stunning toast by weaving together lines from T.S. Eliot and Hemingway. Or Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Willa Cather. I am careful to select happy thoughts, not ominous ones, and to sound inspiring, hopeful that the new marriage will last. Wedding guest like inspiration.

Readinggrams to read to grams and grampas, at their homes or in homes. The term needs work, but it refers to when people hire me to go to their grandparents’ place of residence and either read or talk about books and stories they know. I can make them feel wonderful when they recall the lines to “Roses are red, violets are blue.” Or when they remember scenes from Dick, Jane, and Sally. I do have to work to keep up with newer writing, but am doing a pretty good job. Sometimes old memories bring tears to the grandparents’ eyes, but always have tissues with me for those occasions.

Meals on Wheels. I deliver the food, but also stay to chat, asking what the person is reading. If the answer is nothing, then I jump in with my latest title or recite a poem. It doesn’t matter if it’s not good literature, because I can doll anything up until my listeners are agog with admiration. They want stories as much as food. I deliver both.

Parties. Despite it not being obvious, parties are full of dull conversations, shy people, listlessness. The best antidote for this is a good conversation about noir novels, Agatha Christie, Louise Penny, etc. Everybody loves a good mystery and I can deliver that. Sometimes I throw in a pretty mediocre book, but embellish it so party-goers are amused and forget they’re at a boring party with boring people.

Sports awards nights. This is when all the teams, female and male, for all the sports are receiving awards. No athlete left behind, and everybody wins. The people in the audience are usually there for one person or athlete and could care less about the rest. I bring my A game and indulge in discussions about autobiographies and biographies of sports heroes like Babe Ruth, Micky Mantle, Paul Pierce, that football player who refuses to retire, and more. I don’t dabble in films, only written accounts. Novels are good, but I don’t have any on the tip of my tongue right now except for Tabitha King’s about Green Spark High (Old Town, Maine, for those who don’t know the reference).

Library children’s sessions or reading groups. These are no-brainers, right? I can read to children, but I also tell stories about things I’ve read. The fact that the books from my K-12 years are still fresh in my mind makes it easy to bedazzle the kids. I haven’t forgotten a dog or a horse I read about years ago. The children hear from me that they are all masterpieces. For reading groups, I attend as the one member who can be counted on to have read the assigned book. If necessary and they want me to, I can rave for the full hour.

Note-passer at boring faculty or company meetings. No need to elaborate. I send cute or provocative notes comparing members of the group to various literary characters: Ophelia, Tiny Tim, Pinocchio, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and so on. It makes the time go faster. Nobody seems to care that I’m not a member of the department. They like my literary allusions too much.

Humane Society adoption and fundraising events. I am adept at mingling and describing many tales written about animals and how much they mean to people. The stories are coordinated to fit the events, so dog adoptions get canine stories or verse, and cat adoptions… you get the picture. If I were invited, I could also be helpful at fundraising events for wildlife rehabilitation. There’s lots written about that And my heartwarming stories bring in big bucks.

Disguised customer at bookstores. Pretty obvious. I sidle up to a potential customer and start raving about literature. It never fails: they always buy something.

Park-sitter, often where parents take children. This needs to be done properly, but many lonely parents are happy to have their ears bent, even by a stranger. My lit stories are well-crafted, so it’s not a lot of effort and certainly better than only staring at the slide or jungle gym. (This is usually a freebie.)

Unplanned interviewee for new reporters looking to talk with a person who can carry on a discussion worthy of recording. Anything to fill the end slot on the nightly news.

Doctor’s waiting room. Another obvious opportunity to use my talents. Doctors and dentists know patients can be stressed by waiting, and are happy to hire me to chat about light-hearting readings. I often recite Ogden Nash or talk about The Miracle Worker, uplifting works. My repertoire in this area is rather large. It has to be.

Related: waiting in room for women in labor. Not for the women giving birth, of course! For the family and friends who are anxious to hear the good news. Here the children’s books flourish, as do I. Everybody has favorite childhood reading and the conversation calms the stress of the people waiting for the baby’s arrival. Hospitals use this service.

Possible: Wakes. I am still designing this, but it has great potential. So many literary works are mournful, gut-wrenching, tragic. They fit the tone of the event. People mingle and scrabble to find a topic of conversation. It soothes listeners to hear lines from major Greek authors or Cervantes, and especially from epic poets. Needless to say, the funeral homes as well as the grieving families have hired me.

Why do this? It’s really not about my talking lit or lit crit, because I don’t know how nor do I enjoy it. I’ve already said that my love for the little creatures determined my career path; I was able to tap into their virtues as medication, distraction, connection, obliteration. Meaning, I could hide in them, pull them up around me like a superior sleeping bag, and everything was write with my world. Not right, write.

Words, delicious, in all flavors.

Words, warm, cool, steamy, frigid.

Words, each a pretty picture on a page. Miracles.

Words, silent when written. 

Voices when slipped off the page into a mouth. 

Echoes of everything, past, present, future.

I should have said at the beginning that one possible career would have been to publish scholarly books to feed my professional ego. Claim five articles and three papers on writing only I had read in the past century, and list that in an annual report. Three feet off the ground, academically ecstatic. 

Speaking to the wind, I say. Waste of eye space. I always needed language to be warm and cuddly, purring, sniffing and gobbling. I wanted the books that made me gush and ooh.

The gushing and oohing is really not at all silly. Frankly, it makes me feel good and both my listeners and I end up smiling. Don’t overlook the chance to find a topic of conversation at any moment: Have you read…? It never fails to distract people from their depression. Cheaper than Xanax or whatever is prescribed to numb people. 

I have another project for expanding my activities. Maybe it’s Not as much fun, but it still would be lucrative: I can be a secretive surveyor for a town or government group on how people read - whether on paper, by audio, or in digital format. Opinions about the future of the book could be expressed. Or regarding literacy. I mean, are we already in serious trouble? Everybody has an opinion on that. Even when they don’t care, that’s an opinion. I could counteract with some great stories about stories.

Keep a (paid) blog on mundane or even bad literature, describing its virtues. I’d get a lot of free books. That’s a bit self-serving, though. A Youtube channel is another social media option. 

Perhaps you are still puzzled.

Why literature? Why read? Why write? Why? Wh…

W…

…

Scary, isn’t it?