I need help. I own, by my inaccurate count, over two hundred and twenty collections of short stories. Why? I'm baffled, flabbergasted, appalled: how did things get so out of hand? This is not, of course, the time or place to discuss bibliomania, bibliophilia, addiction, hoarding, or my marriage, the health of which is inextricably linked to the critical mass of books infesting our apartment. No, rather, this is a time to ask: why so many collections of short stories? Do other book lovers have this issue, an issue I didn't know I had? Is there a cure, preferably over-the-counter? I've seen apartments crawling with novels, military history tomes, plays, but never anthologies, at least this many. I would say this discovery makes me feel vaguely perverted, but when your career is in opera, feeling perverted is the least of your worries. Trust me.
Is it really critical to own three versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales? What kind of maniac, biblio- or otherwise, needs at least six different short story collections depicting H.P. Lovecraft's now-mainstream mythos? How many Calvino anthologies does one need? And don't get me started on Bradbury and Borges; e-readers were invented for their endless supply of eerie tales. Multiple collections of Mark Twain stories, Jack London stories, Roger Zelazny, Stephen King, and Philip K. Dick. Pulp villains, pulp fiction, spies, vampires (when they were monsters, not boyfriends), and let's not forget the erotica. Balzac's Droll Stories, John Gardner, Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, Angela Carter, Robert E. Howard, and these are just the multiples! What was I thinking?
Opera. Games. Books. Drama. Art. Bring a long spoon.
