“Sara would read anything you handed her…She read upon waking, sitting on the toilet, stretched out in the backseat of the car…If there was nothing else she would consume all the magazines and newspapers in the house—reading, to her, was a kind of pyromania—and when these ran out she would reach for insurance brochures, hotel prospectuses and product warranties, advertising circulars, sheets of coupon. Once I had come upon the spectacle of Sara, finished with the volume of C. P. Snow while only partway through on of the long baths she took for her bad back, desperately scanning the label on a bottle of Listerine.”
—Michael Chabon, “Wonder Boys”
I can relate.
This leads to the famous line in the movie: “She was a junkie for the
printed word. Lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice.”
