“I have always been one to take notes. Whether I’m driving in a car, sitting in a bar, watching a movie, reading a book, a pen is never far from the hand. In those days I wrote often in pocket-sized moleskin notebooks. I filled dozens and dozens of them with sentences I admired, research unearthed, conversations overheard, images observed, my handwriting like the cardiograph of a racing heart. But I scratched everything down with such impatience—and often tore notes to stack on my desk or tape to the walls around it—that I became lost in a storm of words. I would often attribute the wrong author to a text, telling people about this badass Lorrie Moore story only to see their eyebrows come together in confusion before they corrected me: ‘That was actually Mona Simpson.’ ” —Benjamin Percy in his essay for The Rumpus on how he became The Slow Reader.
Do not miss the good-natured needling between friends (still, we hope) as Percy caricaturizes Jess Walter who, in turn, unleashes poker buddy style in comment #7 at the bottom of the page.