qotd, Dixie Cups
October 23, 2009
Obsessive-compulsive disorder runs in his family, Mr. Chabon says, from his grandmother who “washed Dixie cups fresh from the package in soap and hot water,” through his father, who was an “obsessively completist collector” of things like stamps, bubblegum cards and Ovaltine premiums, down to himself, who “can’t stop trying to fix something that’s broken, some lock that won’t open even with the right combination, some computer program that won’t run or channel that won’t TiVo” even if it means staying up till 4 a.m. When he writes, he says, he often rocks back and forth — “like a junkie who needs a fix, a madman on the subway, a devout Jew at prayer,” and “the more easily the words come, the more wildly I rock.”
-- From Michiko Kakutani's review of Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs.
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