We were discussing books, which we tended to do (media, after all, for journalists, is an opinionated safe house). It was January and someone was reading Freedom, the latest Jonathan Franzen tomb that topped most of the years best books list. To be honest, if you were going to read Freedom, it was already getting too late in the year to do so.
I wasn't going to read Freedom. I was feeling pretty good about this decision. It was counter. I'm not usually a counter kind of a person. I didn't enjoy The Corrections. It was too awkward for me. In fact I had to stop half way through. And I never stop reading books (three-quarters of a way through Anna Karenina my free time was spent "hate reading").
A friend mentioned Franzen's book of essay called How To Be Alone.
"I like Freedom," she said. "But I loved How to Be Alone."
Less awkward, more thought provoking, was the idea.
I had it on my list of books I wanted to read. It was a growing list. Also, by now, it was a month after this Franzen conversation and my memory of it already fading. It's Saturday and we walk past the book-crowded corner on which The Strand stands and I say lets go in.
What are you after, asks R.
This book a friend recommended, How to Be Alone... by David Foster Wallace.
It had been a while and many media-related conversations. So, yes, I had an authorial morph and assumed another, unread, high profile writer.
We pass on The Strand. It's crowded and sweat-inducing and there are street cupcakes to be had.
It's Sunday and R and I are out and about in Brooklyn. We hit up a flea market and were feeling less inspired and more dirty by its collection of other peoples junk, but a week-end malaise takes us to their second floor.
A pile of books welcomes us to the stairwell and I happens to look through it. And what do I find? How To Be Alone. By none other than Jonathan Franzen (a fact quickly remembered).
It was mine for $2.18.
Had I followed The Strand/David Foster Wallace path How To Be Alone may not have been mine. But it is. And somehow this feels important. And... not to put a lot into it, but, this collection of essays is likely to change my life.
It's only right.
The first essay sets Franzen in his apartment on Valentines Day (Valentines Day is tomorrow, ah hem).
He's talking about memory, specifically his father's Alzheimer's, but also how memories tend to be a collection, not just one specific event. For example, he writes
I retain general, largely categorical memories of the past (a year spent in Spain; various visits to Indian restaurants on East Sixth Street)...
True, I have no year in Spain, but I DO have (countless) visits to Indian restaurants on East Sixth Street as my own memories.
See? This book, Mr. Franzen, me: It's destiny. Yes, BYOB Indian restaurants proves that. And just to solidify the bond, I pause, think about one of those restaurant memories, and further ingrain it in my memory.
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