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from: Benjamin Cheever

Gobbling

Posted Thursday, Nov. 12, 1998, at 4:04 PM ET

It's after noon and beloved wife is still in bed with Tom Wolfe. Gobbling Tom Wolfe. That sounds disgusting. It's not. What she's doing, she's reading.

She loves the book, which means I'll have to be disappointed. Just to show I'm different. Just to show I have my own standards. "I thought it was good," I'll say if asked, "but not that good."

Even his newspaper articles were brilliant. Janet had them out when she was going to do a profile of him years ago. He reported on a teen party in Greenwich? Stamford? "All the furniture was on the beach," he wrote " and all the sand was in the living room." Like that.

When I was at the Reader's Digest I helped convince them to run From Bauhaus to Our House as a book section. Not an easy score. And it rated our least popular book section for the whole year. Which made me very proud.

Let them eat cake. Let them read Tom Wolfe.

Running, I listen to books. Hard and easy books. I carry the Walkman in my hand. Often it's glorious, the movement, the view, the words.

Once, I ran in a blizzard listening to Kierkegard. I went ten miles, and wound up suicidally depressed. Why are all the smart ones always so sad?

Now I have to rush to Manhattan. View the Digest masterpieces. Monday they go on the block. I want to be there. Catalogue in paw.

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021
from: Benjamin Cheever

Gobbling

Posted Thursday, Nov. 12, 1998, at 4:04 PM ET
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Benjamin Cheever is a novelist and author of the forthcoming Famous After Death. Susan Cheever is a teacher, columnist, and writer. Her memoir, Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker, is forthcoming. They are siblings.
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