A different kind of contact high
Wherein I make a non-resolution resolution for myself and a non-drink drink for you
“I had the luck and the pleasure of her company a few times over the years, and there was something electrifying about the questions she asked, and the curiosity that drove them. For some people, I think, curiosity can be an emotion, akin to joy, and in the presence of hers you got a kind of contact high.”
—author Michael Chabon remembering A.S. Byatt after her passing, in the caption for a post on Instagram (@michael.chabon) November 18, 2023
The first book I remember becoming wholly obsessed with was Possession, the 1990 novel by British author and academic A.S. Byatt. It’s a Booker prize-winning dual-timeline love story, a literary mystery, an impressive bit of craft with Byatt penning epic poetry in the voice of her Victorian characters, her contemporary protagonists chasing every line. Perhaps you’ve read it? (Please don’t tell me you’ve only seen the movie. I realize it’s a bit of a dusty reader’s cliche, but this novel really is better than that movie.)
For a now-voracious reader, I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to reading for pleasure. Most bookworms I know share some version of a similar childhood origin story of little noses deep in the open pages of a book, oblivious to the world around them (or wishing they could be), carrying teetering stacks checked out from the library, happiest tucked into their rooms or plopped under a tree and left to read indefinitely.
I have strong and happy memories of my mother reading to me and I’m certain I did pick up few books for fun, but I don’t remember it being a consuming habit in my elementary school days. I do recall dreading the weekly caterpillar march my classmates and I had to make down the hall to the school library, made to check out at least one book. I have no recollection of why this was such an ordeal — performance anxiety? fear of peer judgement? the shy, model student’s rare and oddly placed micro-rebellion? Who knows.
What I do know, is that despite the fact that I was plenty keen on deep reading things assigned for classes, it wasn’t until Irene Epp’s1 10th grade English course at Santa Fe Prep that some dormant bookish switch was finally flipped. For reasons I can’t accurately plumb from this altitude of age, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart made me a reader. Not just an A student who strived to read well, but a person self-defined as a Reader, capital R.
Anyway, back to Byatt. The author died this past November, and while I hadn’t read her own words in some years, scanning remembrances of her has tickled some of those happy-obsessive reading neurons for me again. A piece in the New York Times included this deliciously acerbic quote, for one:
“I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.”
But it was this line in the caption of an Instagram post from Michael Chabon (whose The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is another old favorite) that hit such a resonant chord: “For some people, I think, curiosity can be an emotion, and in the presence of hers you got a kind of contact high.” Isn’t that just the truth? Curiosity is electric. It’s generous, generative, and at its most powerful it is infectious. There is, as Chabon says, a kind of contact high you get when you’re around someone whose delight in discovery is too big to be contained by their cutaneous membrane, so that it spreads like a joy-miasma, a frolicsome fog, and by osmosis or association expands those willing to let it touch them.
I’m not in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions (another somewhat cliche stance in its anti-clicheness, I know), but this feels like a goal worth focusing on: Connecting to curiosity in a way that those around you might experience that infectious wonder.
Cheers to tapping into joyful curiosity this weekend.
PS: If you still don’t believe in the power of curiosity, listen to Ted Lasso.
PPS: And now for that drink…
If your curiosity leans toward the sober for “Dry January,” this is one of my recent discoveries for a delicious and complex, but very easy to mix, non-alcoholic sipper. I have been calling the wet version an Aperol shandy since I saw a recipe in the February 2015 issue of More magazine (RIP), but it turns out the drink actually has its own name. The Spaghett is traditionally an ounce of Aperol in a light beer with a squeeze of lemon (I also like the slightly more bitter variation with Campari and lime). And it turns out you can make an incredibly satisfying nonalcoholic spin — let’s call it the NA’Spaghett? the Spaghett-y? — thanks to the Italian soda called Sanbittèr, which tastes remarkably like Campari. Combine it with one of the many high-quality non-alcoholic beers now on the market (we’re fans of Athletic Brewing Co’s Run Wild IPA, which you can find at Whole Foods, among other grocers), squeeze in a little lemon (or a lot, if you’re me), and enjoy. Want a low-ABV option instead? Mix it with one of the two main ingredients as a non-alcoholic and the other full-test.
Cin-cin!
I don’t completely trust my memory on this point, so if any of you also went to Santa Fe Prep in the ’80s and can fact-check me here, I’d greatly appreciate it. Even if Ms. Epp didn’t assign this particular book, she certainly had a meaningful effect on my reading life.
One time, I asked a teacher we all knew very little about--who had seemed so crabby to us in class, so strict and exacting--what her greatest accomplishment was. And she said without hesitation: "My wonderful marriage. My devoted husband has been the love of my life for more than two decades."
You see someone so differently when they talk about love.
Enjoyed this immensely. I will ponder the closing question.