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I developed something of a crush on Elizabeth Bishop after reading The Anthologist. I downloaded an MP3 of her reading “The Fish,” and on an overnight work trip to Barcelona I took with me a copy of Bishop’s collected poems but no clean socks, which is exactly the sort of thing that Paul Chowder might have done. I would say that in my half century on this planet so far, I have valued clean socks above poetry, so The Anthologist may literally have changed my life, and not in a good way. Luckily, it turns out that you can buy socks in Barcelona. Nice ones, too.
- Nick Hornby, from the online excerpt of his latest “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column for The Believer
Three of the more than three things I’d add if I had time:
1) Anyone made crazy by the meanness of “The Problem With Memoirs” piece in Sunday’s NYTBR should check out Hornby’s columns. The column’s basic rule, which Hornby mostly follows, amounts to what so many of our parents taught us: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. So it celebrates the books Hornby enjoys. I value it.
2) Like Hornby, I loved The Anthologist. Please click here and here if you’d like to read a couple of the posts I wrote about it.
3) Thanks to http://ourswimmer.tumblr.com/ for putting Hornby on my mind with this post.
