When I ask my girlfriend about the book she's reading, I'm guaranteed to spend the next few minutes completely confused.
Yesterday, Ami responded to my question by saying that her last reading made her “fall in love with horses.”
The night before he had lost himself in André Gide's “Immoralist.” I knew the novel was about hidden desires, but I had no idea that Gide had brought things to the stable.
After much back and forth, it turns out he was referring to Cormac McCarthy's “All the Pretty Horses.”
That's because whatever book I last saw her read has invariably been finished and replaced by three new books.
Read six books at any given time. From classics to science fiction themes. The latest bestsellers of ancient Greek poems. And she inhales them at a rate that makes me wonder if she really has the job she says she has or spends all day curled up in the Modern Library.
Her “ideal day” is to go to the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood, “visit” the cat who sits at the register, and wander the aisles until she finds three books to take home.
Given that I've made my living as a writer for 45 years, you might think it's wonderful to have a partner who shares an adoration for the written world.
In reality, it is torment.
Many professional writers limit their reading. George RR Martin and Joyce Carol Oates “quarantine” themselves so that other voices do not enter their work, as was the case with McCarthy and JD Salinger.
Like my literary superiors, I sometimes worry that reading will distract me from writing. But unlike them, I live with someone who consumes words at an unimaginable rate.
When I watch my girlfriend devour books faster than the popcorn she has at her fingertips, I feel guilty and envious. It jolts me to remember how much I love the printed page.
When I was a child, my favorite place was the library stacks. He ran his fingers along the spines of the books, as if they were sacred artifacts. But over the years, he had lost that pleasure. Nowadays, I spend more time reading my friends' scripts than I do reading literature. I began to envy how my girlfriend could get lost in words just for the pleasure of it like I used to.
So now, when Ami settles down with a book on the living room couch, I do the same. But it baffles me how relentless his concentration is. How quickly they turn their pages.
I know reading shouldn't be a competitive sport. I really do. But writers are competitive by nature.
It irritated me that she seemed to enjoy reading much more than I did. The moment he finished a novel, he extolled its virtues and demanded that we go to the Iliad or the Last Bookstore to obtain the author's next work.
Meanwhile, I was struggling to read “Ready Player One,” a novel that had been collecting dust for years. Not wanting to be outdone by my speed-reading girlfriend, I went for it. As we lay in bed together reading, my sighs and mutterings about “three damn clichés in one paragraph” caused her to throw me sideways glances.
I realized that this showed a basic difference between us. My girlfriend finds something to enjoy in everything she reads. I, on the other hand, can be picky and hypercritical when perusing the copy on the back of a cereal box.
Even worse is when he reads something of mine. All I can think is that I'm in a fight with all the great writers she cheats on me with.
Last weekend, my girlfriend and I visited the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, a repository of cultural artifacts mostly from the '80s and '90s. Ironically, for all my complaints about “Ready Player One,” it inspired me to suggest the visit. We had a wonderful time, wandering the halls and playing the old arcade games.
A few days later, lying in bed, I made the mistake of mentioning that I had written a 2,000-word essay about how memories (the giant Bob's Big Boy statue, the cast of ET, arcade games) linked to events in my life in unexpected ways.
“I'd like to read that,” Ami declared, not moving her eyes from the book resting on her lap.
The way my heart clenched, you might have thought he was a mugger in an alley saying, “I wish I had your wallet.”
Sweat gathered on my forehead. I was up against their current lineup of Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin and Frank Norris. That's a daunting standard to be judged by. And I'm so critical that I know I would have torn up my own essay if someone had handed it to me.
At the same time, I secretly longed to hear her talk about my writing in the same affectionate tone with which she mentioned other writers.
Since written words are how I relate to the world, this seemed like a critical moment in our relationship. I read the article over and over again. Although I sent it to my editor a long time ago, I made numerous small changes.
I finally emailed him the next morning and prepared to receive a response.
As usual, he finished the essay in less time than it takes me to address an envelope. His judgment was cutting: “Cute, but I don't like it. So C-minus.”
I can't communicate how much this hurts. It was like a hundred paper cuts in my soul.
If the person I cared most about in the world despised my efforts, how could I expect anyone else to like it? Had I been a fool to dedicate half a century to a trade in which I was incompetent? Had I finally been discovered?
Stifling my wounded pride, I wrote a measured response: “So, what exactly did you not like?”
His response confused me even more. “Hey?” was all Ami said.
I looked up your previous email and realized I had misread it.
She had written: “Cute. But I'm not into this. So C-minus.”
And so I wrote this article.
Like I said, I'm competitive. I just can't get through the day with just a C-minus.
The author is a freelance writer in Sherman Oaks. He received an A-minus for this story; Ami deducted half a point because she didn't mention that she's good.
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