I've known it for a while, but I was recently forced to face the fact, while going through my books, that among the writers I list as my "favorite", there isn't a single one whose entire body of work I've read. Atwood, Roth, Murakami, Denis Johnson - all writers I'm loyally devoted to, but I haven't read any of them extensively.
It's not a crime, obviously. I can only assume I'm not alone in this. Furthermore, I can still list Dostoevsky as a favorite, even if I end up hating something of his when I read it years from now for the first time. And yet, I've never felt quite right calling myself a huge fan of someone when I haven't read all their work.
My goal, this year, is to begin rectifying that. Which is also somewhat of a disguise for another goal - to read the books that are already on my shelf, instead of acquiring more. At the top of my list is to get through most of John Ashbery's poetry, and I don't know where I'll go from there. Some more DeLillo, some more Vonnegut, some more Nabokov. We shall see.
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