'It Can Be Exalting'

“Do you ever feel that you spend too much time with books?” The answer true to the spirit of the age would be to respond in the positive and ’fess up to the years wasted, money lost, opportunities missed, relationships scuttled, life in general squandered. That would earn me sympathetic murmurs and pats on the shoulder from my fellow addicts, gathered here in a church basement. (“I can quit…