From Essays After Montaigne
Our appetite is irresolute and uncertaine; it can neither hold nor enjoy any thing handsomly and after a good fashion. Man supposing it is the vice and fault of things he possesseth, feedeth and filleth himselfe with other things, which he neither knoweth nor hath understanding of, whereto he applyeth both his desires and hopes, and taketh them as an honour and reverence to himselfe; as saith Cæsar, 'It hapneth by the common fault of nature that both wee are more confident and more terrified by things unseene, things hidden and unknowne.'
Every August, most of the therapists, psychiatrists, analysts, and psychologists in New York vanish for their annual vacation. Trying to find professional assistance for emotional problems in New York in August is as frustrating as trying to find dinner in Italy before eight o'clock in the evening. The crime rate tends to go up, and that's generally attributed to the heat, but I wonder if the lack of psychiatric supervision might also play a significant role. For the past couple of summers, this absence has been especially difficult for me, because the oppressive heat and, in our previous apartment, the noise tends to made me feel miserable and hopeless. This Weblog was born in part out of the need for an emotional outlet last summer. But this year, things are different. A week or so ago, I actually said to my wife that I didn't have a care in the world, and I still feel that way. So this year, I'm taking my month's break from therapy to enjoy my progress and consider some of my less pressing neuroses (which will no doubt lead to more work once my therapy resumes).
Upon consideration, I've noticed that I'm increasingly inclined to buy books with the least provocation and for the flimsiest reasons. It's not as though I'm suffering a shortage of reading material--the odds are no better than even that I'll be able to finish in this lifetime the unread books I already own. And yet I find that I need Bayard Taylor's translation of Goethe's Faust (in the original meter) as well as the Stuart Atkins translation recommended by Harold Bloom. I've lost count of how many translations of Dante's Commedia I've purchased. Last year, I replaced my complete Proust because there was a new translation overseen by Christopher Prendergast, and this year, I've replaced all of my Freud with the new translations overseen by Adam Phillips. I ordered both of those collections from England because they weren't yet available in the States. And while I was ordering books from England, I replaced all of my Thomas Pynchon and James Joyce with new paperbacks with nothing more to recommend them than the fact that they come from England. I could probably justify each of these decisions as a reader and a collector, but with neuroses, justification is merely another symptom. Fortunately, the cost of all these books relative to my means prevents this compulsion from being harmful (to me in any case).
But it's a compulsion nonetheless. I recognized this when I realized that the thrill of ordering new books grows right up to the moment that they're delivered, after which it quickly subsides. The books go on my shelves (provided I can find space), and immediately I want more. And the process is repeated when I read the books. I'd always rather start a new book than return to a book that I've already started, no matter how much I'm enjoying that book. The parallels with, say, sex or drug abuse are unmistakable. On vacation in Provincetown, in Marshfield, Massachusetts, or in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, I've found myself picking through the dusty shelves of used bookstores, searching for some ultimate edition that will finally sate this need. Before settling down to read for the evening, I always look longingly over the unread books on my shelves for the one that will command my attention to the exclusion of all others. I'm sure that this impulse (in its general form) isn't very exotic. (I imagine I'll be spending time this fall talking to my therapist about the hole in myself that I'm trying to fill.) I spend enough time around geeks to see the manifestation of this impulse in their need to have the latest version of everything, whether or not they need it and whether or not it actually works. I'm not immune to that myself. Earlier this summer, I decided that I needed an iPod. Before I got around to buying one, Apple released the G5, and suddenly that was what I needed. I had forgotten about the iPod except as one of the justifications for needing a G5: if I got an iPod, I'd need a bigger hard drive to hold the music I would want to put on it. Freud would spend pages and pages explicating this linking of impulses. I was using the no longer planned acquisition of something I don't need to justify the planned acquisition of something else I don't need.
If this neurosis were to emerge in areas of my life beyond material acquisitions, it might not be so harmless. I've known my oldest friends only since college, and the oldest friends with whom I'm in anything like regular contact date from the period between college and graduate school. I don't have a single childhood friend, and I haven't had one since before I graduated from college. Yet I haven't been without friends. I've had the good fortune to be befriended by many remarkable people. But they've been good people without being good friends, and the failure has been mine. I lacked the emotional competence to be a friend who could be held onto or who could hold onto others. And given the level of my emotional sophistication, that was fine with me. I didn't know to look for anything beyond the initial rush of getting to know a new person. Getting married and committing to being a friend to the same person for the rest of our lives has slowly changed my perspective. I'm beginning to understand how much more you can give to and get from other people after you've gotten to know them. I'm trying to reach and explore that realm in more of my relationships. At the same time, through this Weblog and, more recently, Friendster, so many interesting people are finding their way to me as friends. It's important that I pay adequate attention to the growth of those relationships, that I continue my commitment to them. There are already too many wonderful people that I'm not in touch with anymore and too many great books sitting unfinished on my night table and shelves.
7:37:27 AM 
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