I told him I was in need of a mentor, and then I provided him with a few basic coordinates of my life. I exposed the nature of my relationship to books. I told him that my ill-fated ancestors and I had survived death through our intimate engagement with literature. Then, I thought to myself, engagement is too mild a word, so I replaced it with refuge. I said: “We, the ill-fated, have taken refuge in literature.” But this description also failed to communicate a sufficient level of intensity.
