Strange Addiction
Of Thomas Bernhard’s latest novel, Extinction, Stephen Mitchelmore writes:
And I wonder, how much of my obsessive-compulsive need to read everything, and I mean everything, around me my entire life, starting from the time I was a tiny little girl and could barely puzzle out the text on the back of my cereal box, has been an attempt to shovel something of substance into the hollow pit in my self?
Tried food – for some food is love, but that didn’t work for me. Don’t want to try alcohol or drugs, as I have alcoholic parents (one still violently in that mindset if chemically sober, another who sometimes goes quietly mad for lack of enough stiff drinks but won’t abuse herself that way anymore and who sadly hasn’t yet learned the value of a bubble bath as a coping mechanism) and long ago made a vow only to drink when I’m happy. Not to mention the fact that most over-the-counter medicines get me pleasantly or unpleasantly swoozled at the stated dosage… I don’t need to support the drug cartels to get buzzed.
That leaves me with literature, caffeine and sex as vices. In the sad state of my failing marriage, sex isn’t a convenient option and too much coffee only shreds my stomach after a while, so I buy books and sometimes read a dozen at a time, much as a spoiled child will cram handfuls of bonbons into her mouth just because she can. Their spines viciously cracked, pages dogeared and margins scribbled over, my vices lie scattered around my house, piled around my bed and strewn sadly undisturbed for night after night on the empty left side of my mattress where I can turn my back on them or nudge them with a stray knee in my sleep – I abuse my books in lieu of my body and only notice what I’m doing when hours of rubbing cheap ink off cheap paper raises blisters on my fingers, my skin suddenly gone sensitive, cracked and peeling. Quantity over quality.