Damn You Book Meddlers!
Friends, we all need a Literary Meddler in our lives. The Literary Meddler is that person who foists unwanted books on us and demands we read them, and is unperturbed when you hate 90% of the books they force you to read.
Of course, I’m kind of disagreeable: A smug know-it-all who deprecates anything he didn’t discover himself. You know the type. If I wasn’t so devastatingly handsome and effortlessly charming, I’d be kind of an asshole. This is why having a Literary Meddler has been so important to me.
Early on, my Literary Meddler, as with many folks, was school: School was constantly popping up at unwanted moments, dancing around my knees like an over-excited puppy, and demanding to know if I’d read those books yet. Had I? Had I? Had I? What did I think? What about that one part, huh? And then when I finally did read them and wrote up a paper on it School was a dick and gave me a B- on it and then handed me a pile of new books to read, many of which I would never have read in a million years on my own.
Today, my Literary Meddler is my wife, The Duchess, who gets incredibly excited about books I would walk right past in the book store and then hectors me to read them incessantly until I do and then is very sadfaced and irritated when I (usually) don’t like them nearly as much as she does.We’ve even had real-life, bitter fights when I didn’t like a character she loved. But the effect is the same: I am forced to read outside my comfort zone, and this is generally a very good thing. Because I have a disease that’s very common in my family (it might be genetic) which causes me to become increasingly cynical and convinced that something is crap the more popular it gets. This is one reason The Duchess and I fight: She assumes I am pre-disposed to dislike things, and when I dislike things it means I never gave them a chance.
Which, to be fair, is often true.
As a writer, this also means I am exposed to a lot of tricks and deceptions I’m not aware of, or have never thought in using in certain ways. Having a Literary Meddler is an essential part of an ongoing education. While their constant insistence that you read things often results in horrifying journeys into fictional worlds you’d rather not visit followed by vicious arguments over whether or not you’re a closed-off poopyhead who wouldn’t know a great story if it hit them on the head much the same way your wife is hitting you in the head with a sock full of quarters right now, it also sometimes broadens your world just a tiny bit.
The take-away? If you don’t have a Literary Meddler, get one. Even if it has to be that weird guy on the subway who always smells like Salmon and is always trying to hand you a handwritten novel in a box.
To be fair, talking to that weird guy on the subway who smelled like salmon and gave me a handwritten novel in a box was how I found Sean Ferrell. And that turned out ok.
To be fair, he smells more like Lobster, because he is fancy.
I find that my literary meddlers tend to be people on Twitter. They mention books. I go look them up. If it sounds the least bit interesting, I try to read it. Janet Reid is one of my meddlers. I’ve read several books because she mentioned them, and several were ones I would have never read otherwise.
My college bff and I sometimes browbeat each other into reading books we wouldn’t otherwise pick up.
Also, I work at the library, so a tremendous percentage of books come through my hands which I wouldn’t have sought out, but which catch my interest for one reason or another (cover, title, somebody returning it and saying it was great and/or terrible, etc.)
As you capitalized “salmon” I assume you are referring to downtown literati/poet manque Salmon Rushday, who the last time I took a breath near him actually smelled like gingerbread, rosewater, and anchovies. Of course he is not to be confused with the similarly monikered, more famous — though less aromatic — Salman Rushdie, who smells like money, natch. (Also, the biggest lit meddlers of the day are the “list 10 books you’ve read that made your bleak life temporarily worthwhile and shame ten people into doing the same” Facebook folks, who in veiled terms tell you that based on your choices you rate somewhere between “cretin” and “barbarian.” Or so I’ve heard.)
FACEBOOK POSTS ARE THE WORST. That is all.