Sweat beads form as I touch her spine. I tremble as I touch her smooth, virgin surfaces. Finally.... I plunge between the covers of my new paperback!

These thoughts entered my mind as I opened the pages of my new novel, "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and read only a few brief pages about two brothers who can succesfully forge literature from the 14th to today and have it displayed. The way they describe their connection with the books they obssess over (because only the obssessed can spend that much time pain stakingly spending hundreds upon hundreds of hours creating and forging a book so that it looks four hundred years old) made me think about Dr. Sexson's brief note on the erotic connection we have with books.

One paragraph from the book, pg. 114, where the protaganist is visiting these brothers to see if the book he holds is a forgery, goes like this:

" 'I'd like your opinion on this. '
It wasn't the first time. Slowly, even cautiously, Pedro and Pablo Ceniza moved closer. As usual, the older of the two brothers spoke first. 'The Nine Doors.' He touched the book without moving it. His bony, nicotine-stained fingers seemed to be stroking living skin. 'Beatuiful. A very valuable book.' "

Then, a few pages later, their talking about how they create their masterpieces, and that some bindings are now more valuable than the texts themselves. On page 118, it reads:

" 'Papal bulls of the Holy Crusade, dated 1483.' The brother smiled equivocally. He might have been talking about pornographic material rather than a pile of old papers..........."


These two brothers, obssessed in their art of recreating masterpieces, not for the money, but for the art, are only two of many incredibly interesting characters who obssess and become quite erotic indeed with the things they handle all day long, their books. Rich book collectors who obssess over nothing else but their books, touching each every day, making sure they are aired out and put into the EXACT same places, and even playing music for them at night.

It is the curse of the literary lover, that the one thing he loves most in this life is not something that any other can understand unless they themselves becom "erotic" with the same book themselves. Is it lonely, though? You live in the world of those who live in your books... you live more lives than those who do not read because you've experienced murders, adventures, and discoveries. You bleed with them, cried with them, and died with them. You have lived and lived and lived. Do not be ashamed to call yourself "erotic" with your books. You are close to them, you love them, and thus you should. They make you who you are.

By the way, I finished The Club Dumas in a matter of days because I found it hard to put down. An amazingly wrote metaliteral thriller novel. Have some fun and pick it up sometime. Just make sure to give it a little stroke before flipping those pages open. ;)