Don't Bother Me Now, I'm in the Zone

I was trying to remember the last time I was totally immersed in reading a book. I mean I zoned out from everything around me, and I just flew through the pages. That's got to be the reader's ultimate high. The last time like that for me escapes my memory as I write this weblog. Has it been that long ago?

Specific reads at specific junctures in life come to mind. Walker Percy's The Movie Goer wrapped me up in its evocative prose one year in college when I read it. Earlier, like many, I got a big charge from Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Maybe our youth is what makes our reading experiences more vivid and alive.

For some reason, vacations make readings more intense. One summer we stayed in Bermuda, and I took along Pat Conroy's Beach Music to occupy me while hanging out. And boy did it ever. I'm not sure I've ever read anything else by the same author since then. It was just the right time and place.

Harry Crews' A Feast of Snakes knocked off my socks in graduate school. I've not read Feast since then. Would it (it's just downstairs here on the bookshelf) have the same impact on me today on a re-read? Well, I'm not sure I want to find out if it does. I sort of like keeping my good memories of the experience.

Back then, Peter Mass' Serpico also stirred my passions. The honest Frank Serpico was also a cool cat. I lent out my paperback and then never saw it again. How many times have you done that? Would he appeal as much to me today? Again, I'll just let my rosy memories be.

I'm sure every time I pick up a new book and begin reading it, my deepest hope is to enter that all-too-rare zone of sheer joy over taking in the words. Nothing else can beat it.

Ed Lynskey
@edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles and Quiet Anchorage