He [her husband] thinks of my compulsive reading and writing as ‘work,’ and he doesn’t much quiz me on it; I’m not about to tell him that I am, just like Anna and Emma, an adulteress. My books are my secret lovers, the friends I run to to get away from the daily drudgeries of life, to try out something new, and yes, to get away, for a few hours, from him. He doesn’t need to know that my books are the affairs I do not have.
I've tried to justify in many ways the hours I've spent reading and the $$ I've spent on books: I'm doing research on other cultures; I'm reading for spiritual direction; I need to have things to talk about any party I might go to someday; I'm trying to stall coming to bed because it's phase 2; I'm trying to keep up with what the kids are reading . . . but escape is a top reason. And love of books and even just the idea of reading.
My dh did get a little jealous one time of a relationship I had with a book: Lizzie’s War, which resonated so much with me that I felt like I was reading the story of my life, even though all the details were different. I loved it so much I bought copies for my sister and friends and wrote the author an email saying how much I loved his book. Turned out he lived in our area and wrote back. Suddenly this book was a real person. I went on to take a writing class from him at a little writing workshop in our neighborhood. It was an interesting diversion that resulted in no real progress in my writing, other than it forced me to face the fact that I am a reader and not a writer. And my husband’s jealousy dissipated when he realized that not only was this author old enough to nearly be my father, but he was no competition for my abiding love.
My latest affair is with Evelyn Waugh. Today I finished Put Out More Flags while I was substitute teaching. (I might comment on that at a future point.) Not one of Waugh's that I had heard anything about, but I passed its spot on the shelf while at the library and picked it up. It's very Waugh: satirically funny, darkly biting depiction of an ensemble of the British uppercrust trying to get involved or avoid getting involved in WWII. None of the characters is at all likable - they are flippant about the horrors of war and the effects of their careless ways on other people - but I found myself wanting to find out what they did next; to linger at the edge of their party. I wish I could live in one of their manses or villas or flats, despite - or because of - their gentility and decadence even in the face of imminent destruction. Waugh succeeds at making you pity these people despite their scornful selfishness. Maybe because we all have a little scornful selfishness hidden somewhere, a sense that we know better than the fools in charge (not that they aren't fools). At least some of the characters, perhaps the most self-satisfied ones, realize they, too, are foolish and desperate; perhaps that is their redemption, if one exists. Or am I just looking for one? I was sorry the book was over, but I didn't put it down with a sense of closure, although the anti-hero, Basil Seal, does finally attempt to undo his betrayal of a friend and to volunteer to fight in the war.
