This question occasionally after people have known me for a few months, because I have a strong habit of making references to this and to that. I don't answer it very often.
The explanation is really very simple. I'm not well read at all. I'm just good at looking that way. I haven't read most of the books I'm familiar with. I don't have the depth or thoroughness of a classical education, or even simply of a dedicated reading program. And along with all the books I haven't read at all are the books I've only half-read: Les Miserables, The Sun also Rises, God in Search of Man... My apparent erudition comes largely from a few semi-encyclopedic, scattershot collections I've flipped through over the years: The Jewish 100, An Incomplete Education, a book my mother had with pictures and essay of great works of art in the Western tradition that I would sit with for hours as a child.
But this answer may just raise more questions: Why develop a passing familiarity with so many things? Isn't depth of understanding more fulfilling? And why read such collections so urgently at such a young age.
The answer to these questions is even more simple, and I share it far less.
I was raised by wolves.
But no ordinary wolves. No, these were highly intellectual wolves, for whom a pup unable to converse about Early Romantic Literature was a disgrace and a liability, fit only to be left alone to starve in the cold, harsh world of academia. From my earliest days, appearing well read was a matter of life and death.
It is fortunate, then, that I found so much pleasure in a matter which was essential to my survival.
