“Twelve Shelf Program”
Hello, everyone, my name is Greg, and I have a problem.
No, it’s not drugs, or even alcohol, even though anyone who has seen me when I’m imbibing might have their bone of contention on that matter. No folx, I am what you call an alpha-holic.
That’s right, I said ALPHA-holic. An alpha-holic is one of those rare addicts who can’t seem to stop buying, collecting and reading books. In this cathode-ray soaked age of television, internet, and instant information, it’s an extremely rare form of addictive processes, to be sure. Nonetheless, those of us who suffer from its ravages suffer more than a mild form.
Let me explain first when I realized I had hit rock bottom. Like most addictive problems, I lived in denial of this situation for years. When people saw me lying on the couch with one book in my lap, a magazine at my feet, a pile of comic books on the floor, and another book open in front of my face, people would kind of mutter in astonishment, “Are you reading all of those at the same time?” I of course brushed their concerns off with an “Of course not. I don’t read them at EXACTLY the same time.”
The one coffee shop barrista where I tend to frequent these days to indulge in my vice was the first really to raise an eyebrow though. With money in hand to procure my necessary caffeinated rations, she kept noticing at least one book under my arm, and, probably being nice simply asked what I was reading. After a more than long-winded explanation that I was back to reading my half-finished copy of Charles Cross’s biography on Kurt Cobain, “Heavier Than Heaven”. She simply remarked in an “oh, that’s cool” fashion…until two days later when I was back again. With another couple of books under my arm. So she asked “What do you have today?” and succumbed to another long-winded explanation that today I was going to bang out a couple more chapters of Lauren Belfer’s “City of Light” before maybe switching off to Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections” or David McCullough’s new work on the early days of the American Revolution, “1776″. I pointed this out, because, while I overall like Belfer’s plot, and enjoyed the historical backdrop of the novel (it’s set in 1901 Buffalo), I found her prose to be garish and cloying, “like a bad romance novel,” and had to further point out that I found Franzen’s syntax much more witty and satisfying, while still being complex and ornate, and McCullough was just a master at putting American history into its proper context. I think she made another “oh, that’s cool” remark, but with much less zeal this time, maybe because I couldn’t have come off as more of a printed word junkie at that point if I had inkspots on my eyeballs. She was suitably astonished enough to ask finally, “Did you finish the last book you were reading already?”
“Oh, no,” I said, waving the idea off. “That one is just back at home. I just read a lot of books at the same time.”
“About how many?” she had the bravery to ask.
“I dunno, maybe four or five dozen.”
Her mouth slackened some with incredulity.
A few days later, out of some random whim, I decided to have a look at exactly how many books I’m in the middle of reading right now. I also came to the decision that I would exclude any magazines, alternative newspapers, comic books or graphic novels I might be in the middle of. Too many of those are easily read in the span of twenty minutes to an hour and a half or a week. So it would be strictly books I would count. And so, I began to go across the living room floor, over to the end tables, over next to the couch, up to the one set of shelves behind the television, over to the book case, then into the kitchen table, and on into the bedroom, and its tables, bookshelves, and floor. And on through the house I went, counting along, keeping in mind to remember the three or four sitting in the passenger seat of my car from lunch break earlier that day.
And I came to a shocking realization. I should have come to that realization when I counted thirteen books in the bathroom alone–and I’m surprised one of my roommates didn’t voice some concern by now either in this lifetime. My total number of books currently being read: 134.
And I had four more on order from Amazon.
I suppose I should have seen the warning for years, when I thought nothing of spending over a third of a week’s salary at the bookstore, with a booty of bound paper object under my arm. The counter help would always ask “find everything?” My response in the old days would have been “Yes, thank you,” or a query about something I hadn’t been able to find that day. In later years, when the help asked “find everything?” I would say, “For today!”
Yes, I suppose that should have been a sign.
Part of the reason I think is the fact that I’m an information junkie, who actually finds entertainment in, shudder, LEARNING stuph. I don’t just want to learn the facts, I want to find the perspective behind the facts. It’s why I read both fiction and non-fiction with an avaricious peculiarity.
Another part of the reason was the fact that I have long felt the need to earn the nickname I was painted with in my musician days, when dubbed “The Professor.” No, I’m not a professor, never have been, actually. I got the name for a few reasons: it was a nod to one of my musical heroes, Neil Peart (also nicknamed by his band mates as The Professor), it hearkened back to my grandfather’s nickname of “Prof” (at least he was a school teacher), who was a personal hero. But most of all, it was because I was a know-it-all (especially for a musician), who had no problem going toe to toe in the musicians’ more common habits of entertaining themselves through recreational substances. But the whole time I would do it either with my nose in a book, or at least TALKING about a book I had my nose in last. Guitarists and drummers were talking shop, or about women (more often about women). I, the lowly singer and lyricist was immersed in a book. What a dunce.
The problem is, once someone marks you with the nom de guerre “Professor”, you kind of have to prove you have it for a reason. People start remarking “Ask Greg, he knows everything.” My choice was to either admit I didn’t know the answer to their question, or actually try to know everything. This may sound a bit arrogant, but so far in life, I bat about a .750 on at least knowing SOMETHING about what I’m asked. And at least 50 per cent of the rest of the time, I’ll say “Let me look that up for you and get back to you tomorrow.” And it wouldn’t be a lie.
And it’s like mob bosses will tell you. Once you earn a spot as the boss of anything, even that of being a pissy know-it-all, everyone else has to take a shot at knocking you off the top of the heap. Which means I had to learn even more.
One book at a time became four books at a time to keep pace with my need to know everything. And that became eight, and then twenty, and then three dozen, and then the snowball kept rolling.
It’s also a lot to do that I am a collector as it is. I also own in the neighbourhood of six or seven hundred CD’s (you lose accurate count after three hundred, and they’re all over the house and car), several dozen movies on tape and DVD (alright, it’s probably almost two hundred by now), and the stack of graphic literature I started collecting since I was twelve could probably fit into a small vault by now.
I don’t like throwing away stuph like that. Even books I’ve finally COMPLETED have to stick around in the shelves before getting put into storage. Just so I can show them off. At least a little while. Of course, when you’re buying books faster than you can move them OFF the shelf, that time as “show pieces” has diminished significantly.
So, it’s obvious, I’ve got a pretty nasty problem on my hands. How does one establish a social life in their thirties when they can’t get the smell of newsprint off their fingers, or the smell of leather binding out of their napsack? How do I hold a conversation without it eventually ending up an annoying, frenetic diatribe on something I’ve read, or you’ve read, but I haven’t yet but I’m going to soon (meaning “I need to go make a trip to the bookstore tomorrow”)?
It’s like they say, the first step to recovery is admitting that one has a problem. So I’m getting that out of the way. Until we all can figure out the next step, I’ll be over in the corner starting my newly purchased copy of Lenny Bruce’s “How to Talk Dirty and Influence People.”
