The Summer I Read 47,000 Books

I've been in the process of moving my book collection around, which made me think of the summer of 1997, when my collection grew by leaps and bounds. July 1997, to be specific, because that was the month I started working as an editor at Details magazine.

At the time I was living with the Bride (just before she became the Bride) in lovely Allentown, PA, but we weren't able to relocate to NYC until September. For a little over two months I experienced what I now fondly refer to as the "Summer My Book Collection Grew Like Crazy," but back then called my "Three State Commute From Hell." See, to make it to my office at Broadway and Bleecker by say, 9:30 a.m., I had leave our apartment by 6:45 a.m., drive 10 minutes to the Wescosville Diner, where I could catch the two-hour Bieber Bus ride to Port Authority in Hell's Kitchen, then hop a 15-minute B,D,F or Q subway line down to the Broadway-Lafayette Station. All told, about two and a half hours. Then, the same thing back at night. Repeat five times.

Sure, once in a while I cheated and stayed with a friend for a night or two. But for the most part, my ass was traveling 5 hours per day, five days a week.

(There are some people who do this all of the time. Like, for a 30-40 year career. So I'm not complaining. Especially now that my commute is about 10 seconds.)

So new job, plus long commute, created the Perfect Storm of Book Acquisition. Suddenly:

a.) I had five hours to do nothing but read; and

b.) I suddenly had a decent-paying job, which meant my book budget had increased four-fold; and

c.) I was working in Manhattan, pretty much the book capital of the friggin' universe.

So I read my fuckin' eyes out.

It got to the point where I'd start a novel in the morning, and finish it somewhere around Clinton, New Jersey. At which point I'd read a magazine, or start tomorrow's book.

I read like coke fiends snort.

I can remember where I bought each book: mostly Shakespeare and Company on Broadway (aross from NYU) and Tower Books, just around the corner. Shakespeare, though, was my favorite, because they stocked a mystery/crime section like nobody's business.

And I can remember the titles of pretty much every book I read.

Which included: all of Raymond Chandler (minus The Long Goodbye, which I'd read the year before); Raymond Chandler Speaking; Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye, and Amnesia Moon; Haruki Murakami's Wild Sheep Chase, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Dance Dance Dance, The Elephant Vanishes; Picador's Jim Thompson Omnibus 2 (After Dark My Sweet, A Hell of a Woman, Savage Night, A Swell Looking Babe, Nothing More Than Murder); Robert Polito's Savage Art; Geoffrey O'Brien's Hardboiled America; John Ridley's Stray Dogs; Astro Teller's Exegesis; Fredric Brown's The Far Cry...

I could go on. (Seriously.)

But what I realize is how much these books have stayed with me, influenced me, haunted me. Hardboiled America, especially, kicked off my 10+ year love affair with vintage paperbacks and Gold Medal-style pulp. There's a checklist of books in the back, and damned if I haven't been slowly working my way through that list ever since.

I have to say that my two-month binge (a mix of noir, SF, and noir/SF hybrids) was a big influence on Secret Dead Men, which I wrote the following summer.

I also think that the experience of gorging on novels -- having the luxury of five friggin' hours to totally immerse myself in a piece of fiction -- left me with the desire to do the same for other readers, which is why my novels tend to be the type you snarf down quickly. Novels where you don't even need five hours.

And, as the Bride can tell you (shaking her head wearily) that's where my book collection, as it exists today, was truly born. We were in New York for two years, and sweet Jesus in heaven did I gather an unholy number of books -- new, used, free, whatever.

I'm looking at my Jim Thompson omnibus right now, and I tell ya, I'm gettin' misty.

(Illustration at top by Scott Laumann.)