FIERCE ANTICIPATION: July 31-Aug 2

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a blogumn by Ryan Dixon

FIERCELY ANTICIPATING

Finishing The Power Broker

 

This column is a cry for help. While I normally wouldn’t use this space to talk about my personal life, this particular crisis has left me paralyzed to think or write about anything else:

I am in a long-term book reading relationship and I’ve never been happier. After much hesitation and several false starts about a month ago I began to read The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro.

A classic from the moment it was published in 1974, this biography of Robert Moses — America’s master builder who created more public works than any other human being in history — remains the story of New York City and an indispensable guide to backroom politics. It is also 1344 pages long and weighs 3.3 lbs.

Those who know me well are aware that I often date many books before settling down with the one that I read to completion. While even the smallest distraction can cause me to put one book down and open up another, I can honestly say that The Power Broker is providing me with the most joyous reading experience of my life.

As of today I am on page 491. Normally that would mean that I would be in the homestretch, powering to the end, but being 491 pages into The Power Broker only means that you’re a little over a third of the way through. Perhaps because of the monumental commitment needed to finish this magnum opus,  this past week has been a Manichean battle to stay faithful to my current literary love and not let my more rancid book slut tendencies rear their ugly head.

To help you better understand this crisis, I have provided the following excerpts from my journal after the jump:

July 24th

Walked through Barnes and Noble in Santa Monica with girlfriend Amy today. We pass the science section and stop when I see that Leonard Susskin’s The Black Hole War — the true tale of the feud between Stephen Hawking and the author over the nature of black holes– is newly out in paperback.

Blood rushes to my brain. My mind flashes back to the times when I would genuflect before the hardcover edition and promise myself…

Just wait till it comes out in paperback. Then you can buy it.

Now here it is, in paperback. But now I’m the one who’s unavailable. Too scared to even pick it up, I make a beeline out of the store, mumbling to myself, “Must read Power Broker first. Must read Power Broker first.”

Amy thinks I’m trying to avoid her and, for the rest of the evening, refuses to talk to me.

July 25^th

Read Chapter 21 of T.P.B. tonight — Robert Moses loses the 1934 New York Governor’s race. What a great chapter! I really think the book and I have regained that special spark! Black Hole …What?!? LOL!

July 27^th

Merce Cunningham died last night.

In this morning’s NY Times appreciation, dance critic Alastair Macaulay states, “In his final years he [Cunningham] became almost routinely hailed as the world’s greatest choreographer. For many, he had simply been the greatest living artist since Samuel Beckett.”

I know and admire Beckett’s work. But Cunningham’s? No. I shudder at my ignorance. The more I read about Cunningham online, the more I want to go to my bookshelf and grab Chance and Circumstance, a memoir about the twenty years Cunningham dancer Carolyn Brown spent with the troupe. I purchased the book two years ago. Until today I thought it was one of my most foolish book purchases ever; from the moment I removed it from the Amazon box I began to come to grips with the fact that I would probably never read a 700-page book about a dancer. But now, my interest is piqued.

The afternoon doldrums arrive, I am bored and in need of stimulation. Promising myself not to read anything but the inside flap and back cover, I lustily grab Chance and Circumstance off the bookshelf.

Upon its touch, my heart does pirouettes. The book’s firm hardcover shape has remained immaculate these past two years, while the wear and tear of reading has given my paperback copy of T.P.B. creasing at the corners and spine damage in the back.

Pushing away the guilt of knowing that T.P.B. is resting peacefully in my bedroom unawares, I rush into the bathroom with Chance and Circumstance. Sitting upon the toilet, with sweat beading down my brow, I open the book and read the first pages hoping that, like most memoir/biographies, the first chapter will focus on a typical rural childhood or slum-laden abusive urban life; instant gateways to boredom.

Instead Ms. Brown opens the book by describing a Cunningham performance. Eight pages in, her younger self has just moved to New York and is about to go to a party where she will meet Cunningham—

I shut the book. If you want a New York Story, then read the book that has “…the Fall of New York” in the subtitle.

Disaster has been avoided. Barely.

July 28th

Tonight T.P.B. and I went to bed together. Despite my promise earlier in the day to read at least forty pages, I’m exhausted and fall instantly to sleep. What happened to the passion I felt for the book at the beginning? Oh, how I long for those Halcyon days when I would plough through 20 additional pages no matter how tired I was.

July 29th

While going for an afternoon jog I listen to the Slate Culture Gabfest podcast panel discuss Nabokov’s Lolita and think…

That’s one of my favorite books of all time. You haven’t read it in a long, long time, Ryan. Why not take a look at—No! No! No! NOOOOO!!!!!!

I run until my knees buckle and then collapse onto the cement. Back in my apartment, I take a cold shower, trying to freeze out the thoughts of having a second serving of Nabokov’s sinewy prose.

I exit the shower. But instead of going into my room to get dressed, the siren song of that immortal Nymphet beckons me to the bookshelf where I caress Lolita‘s soft, flesh-colored binding.

Unable to resist the illicit temptation, I take the book into my room and lay it in bed next to me. It’s the Vintage Annotated Version and, since I purchased it at Barnes and Noble during a “buy two get one free” sale, this copy is brand new, never opened. I tickle and tease the front cover, desperate to open it and re-discover the intoxicating pleasures  that surely wait within.

But just as I’m about to insert my fingers within its pages, the dark consequences of my potential actions take hold. My hand retracts. I end up not reading a single page, but still can’t stop staring at the cover until sleep finally overtakes me near the dawning of the new day.

July 30^th

Maybe I should have just read Chapter Thirteen of Lolita and quenched my desire. Today I find myself eying books that I never used to give second thought to. I hit bottom at the grocery store when I catch myself ogling the works of Nora Roberts.

Embarrassed and ashamed by my debased state, I rush home and approach T.P.B. I fall to my knees, tears rolling down from my face. “I thought I could read you the whole way through, but I just don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”

After a tortuous moment that seems to last a lifetime, I look back up. The book remains sitting there, its massive bulk unmoving. Just wanting to be read, like it has every night for the past month.

And then I remember all the reasons I started reading it in the first place — the unanimous critical acclaim, never-before-seen look into the machinations of city government, a personal tragedy on the level of Sophocles and Shakespeare and the Pulitzer Prize.

I smile at the book. Cautiously I pick it up and, delicately opening to the page where I left off, begin to read:

Because of the arrogance that was so basic to his nature—and to his mother’s and grandmother’s—Moses’ susceptibility to the addiction of power was unusually strong…

And I’ve come home again. Back where I belong.