One of the things I really like about living with Larry is that he often reads to me. When we were first together he did this a lot. I must have heard a good third of Ellman’s biography of Joyce the first summer we were together, Larry reading while I cooked.
Yesterday, over a breakfast of potatoes, zucchini, onion, garlic, and kale from the garden, fried and topped with poached eggs, he read an excerpt from an interview with Malcolm Gladwell, who was asked what literary character he would like to meet:
“I’d like to go for a long walk on the Hampstead Heath with George Smiley. It would be drizzling. We would end up having a tepid cup of tea somewhere, with slightly stale biscuits. I would ask him lots of questions about Control, and he would evade them, gracefully. ”
Then Larry read a long passage from le Carré about Smiley. Haven’t read Le Carré? Me either. But according to Larry, I’m in for a treat.