“I was in love with literature and with a woman to whom I’d been attracted in part because she was a brilliant reader.”
“The classic nerd, who finds a home in facts or technology or numbers, is marked not by a displaced sociability but by an anti-sociability. Reading does resemble more nerdy pursuits in that it’s a habit that both feeds on a sense of isolation and aggravates it. Simply being a “social isolate” as a child does not, however, doom you to bad breath and poor party skills as an adult. In fact, it can make you hyper-social. It’s just that at some point you’ll begin to feel a gnawing, almost remorseful need to be alone and do some reading— to reconnect to that community.”
“If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we’re talking about when we use the word “identity” has reached an end.”
Jonathan Franzen’s How To Be Alone is remarkable.
