American - Critic | 1948 -
In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries.
Michael Dirda
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Once upon a time, I sat in my mother's lap as she turned the pages of Golden Books, and I gradually learned to read.
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At the age of 14, I ran away from home for four days and hitchhiked around western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio.
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At 17, I traveled to Mexico in a lemon yellow Mustang and saved money by bunking down in cheap, cockroach-infested flophouses. In my early 20s, I went on to thumb rides through Europe, readily sleeping in train stations, my backpack as a pillow. Once I even hunkered down for a night on a sidewalk grate - for warmth - in Paris.
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At any given moment, I've always assumed that nearly everyone around me was smarter than I was, more naturally gifted, quicker-witted, and probably capable of understanding Heidegger and Derrida.
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I'm sometimes willing to put in vast, even inordinate amounts of time if I find a project that interests me.
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With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone.
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My wife tells me I should check out 'Downton Abbey', but I gather that series might be almost too intense for my temperate nature.
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In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy.
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I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again.
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My own particular feline companion answers, or rather doesn't answer, to Cinnamon. One of my kids must have given her the name, even though she's mostly gray and white.
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In truth, I'm not really a cat person. Seamus, the wonder dog, still deeply mourned by all who knew him, was just about the only pet I've ever really loved.
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