Confessions of a Hard-Core Bibliophile

I remember how it felt when they caught me the first time. Midnight, 1966. The covers suddenly ripped away to reveal a flashlight, a crimson face, a book and the shame of . . .

Bibliophilia. Tragically, the early warning signs went unheeded. Occasional social perusing at the local bookmobile (there is no such thing as a merely “social” reader) soon led to recreational hyper-glossing, then to full-blown speed reading.

At Glendale Community College I got hooked on the hard stuff--”The Federalist Papers,” Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” Plato’s “Republic.” This so-called youthful experimentation came to the attention of state authorities, and I was transferred to UCLA for three years of hard labor.

Inevitably, I gained access to the prescription stuff they kept locked away in the Graduate Research Library, and, once inside, I soaked, basted and drowned my brain in a virtual pharmacy of exotic substances.

God only knows what opportunities I squandered as mind and soul took excursions to Procopius’ Byzantium, Vasari’s Florence, Richelieu’s Paris and the smoky, opaque world of Hegel’s synthetic logic.

Like some lexicographic Wilt Chamberlain, I strutted and bragged of the myriad tomes trucked into my room and wantonly groped--often without covers.

Concerned friends noted the lapses, the antisocial tendencies, the awkward ignorance about “Dallas” and “Geraldo”--the growing disgust with the Channel 7 Eyewitness News Team.

Other telltale symptoms mounted: tired eyes, sore neck, expanding diction; a nearly immovable mountain of frayed Penguin paperbacks dragged from one ratty flophouse to another.

My associates now came from the lower strata: professors, bookstore proprietors, librarians, linguists--even journalists.

Oh, the depths I plumbed!

The state granted parole, but I was still sick. I tried to find steady employment, yet was constantly hobbled by an insatiable desire to read and reflect on the job.

After a year of binge reading at Columbia University, I woke up in a third graduate program. Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” was mine: Staring from my mirror was a slithering bookworm.

The long and winding road to recovery began only recently, when I wandered forlornly into a Tujunga screening of Sylvester Stallone’s “Judge Dredd.” Sensing impending brain death (experts have found among bibliophiliacs a low immunity to monosyllabic dialogue and primordial grunting), I pulled out my pocket-size “Life of Socrates.”

Through an ink-induced delirium, I saw visions of contorted faces whose popcorn-masticating jaws were agape with contempt. Parents covered the eyes of their screaming children.

“Look at him, Mommy, look at that man--reading in our movie theater!”

Cinema Ponderer Seized: Terrified Citizens Relieved.

Glowering headlines filling my febrile mind, I was dragged outside, questioned, then detained under the rules of habeas textus.

A search warrant turned up a list of offenses longer than a Moebius strip--my fingerprints on correspondence from known etymologists, a stack of privately purchased hardbacks, a 20-pound unabridged Random House dictionary (second edition).

The public defender winked, then recommended an insanity plea. “You have an irreversible, hereditary-conditional obsession with printed words. Cruel parents, no doubt--a shrink will testify.”

I chose instead to plead nolo contendere at the arraignment, quoted a few stanzas from Plato’s “Symposium” and flung myself on the mercy of the bench.

The prosecution sought the ultimate penalty, but the court mercifully declared the forced intake of network sitcoms to be cruel and unusual punishment.

Despite unanimous testimony by an army of expert witnesses, probation was granted.

“Hasta el video, baby,” the bailiff said, handing me a stack of Van Damme and Schwarzenegger rentals to be viewed concurrently with enrollment in a peruser detox clinic. But that was last week; I’ve since been born again.

Debt fully paid, I feel ready to become a normal member of the Valley. Slowly, painfully, I am etching a new self-image in the mirror, squashing the ugly bookworm that destroyed my self-esteem.

But sometimes, as I walk by Crown Books on Foothill Boulevard and glimpse the old brands in the window--Signets, Perennials and those neuron-banging Penguins--the craving returns.

It would be so easy, I think guiltily. Just put them on the credit card and stuff them in a plain, brown bag. Who would know?

Then I remember what reading did to my mind--how I stopped watching TV, how my memory became acute, how I learned to think for myself in the world capital of sound bites and celluloid.

So I return home, switch on the court-mandated VCR, and the desire to read, and to think, gradually subsides. Then I realize--despite the split infinitive--that it’s getting easier to just say no.