Books and Essays I Blame for the Way I Write

I have a problem with the word reader. It sounds so passive. So reclining. So person-in-a-hammock. As if reading were something that happened to you, like middle age, like a bad haircut you’re now committed to growing out. Reading isn’t passive. Reading is the most violent thing I do sitting down.

I read because I’m a vulture. I circle. I look for the living thing that’s going to show me how it’s done. I steal. I’m always running a low-grade fever of other people’s ideas, and I’ve stopped trying to bring it down because the fever is the work.

I do not want to get well. Getting well would mean making things in a vacuum, and nobody makes anything worth keeping in a vacuum. You need the contamination. You need the books. And these, specifically, are the ones I blame for the way I write and keep reinfecting myself with anyway, every year, without a single trace of remorse: