too many Daves

I’ve just finished my second consecutive listen to the audiobook of Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist. It’s a rare event for me, this urge to listen, listen again, and probably listen a third time. Exceedingly rare, actually. The only precedent is Jeremy Irons’ reading of Lolita. That was different — simple awe at Nabokov’s deftness.

Baker’s book is a home for me right now. Maybe this “book is a home” thing will seem less sad, less deranged when you factor in that I like my real home, too, and treasure the people who share it with me. Whether or not it makes sense to call it a home, this novel is exactly the right book, saying the right things, and pointing — just as the best photographs do — at the sort of moments that are so easy to miss. Miss or forget.

Here, from page 226, is one such moment:

She lowered her head to the grocery bag she held and she breathed in. She said, “Don’t you love the smell of brown paper bags filled with raw vegetables?”

I leaned and smelled inside the bag. “Yes, I like it very much,” I said. Trying to stay on an even keel but feeling a lot of love for her and wanting to lie down on the sidewalk as a result.