I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

For as long as I remember, I've been enamored with books as objects.

Maybe even before I started reading them.

They were in our home stacked floor to ceiling, crowding the second floor hallway.

I enjoyed the fill of cloth-bound books and loved running my hand over embossed lettering.

Go-edge paper made reading a kind of treasure.

As a result, I became addicted to the hunt and discovery of new books, who's a pill

with sensory.

My curiosity as a child, let me to use bookstores as a brooding teenager.

They were plenty.

My favorite being book haven on Springgarten in Philadelphia.

I fanatically rummaged for first editions, rare printings, broadsides, and chat books

in antiquarian bookshops, breathing the musty smell of molded pages.

As an adult, I became interested in the author as a human being, more than an exalted

literary figure.

I was curious about their daily existence, their triumphs and shortcomings.

I sought to grasp the relationship between art and life.

I read biographies and visited museums, or if I were lucky, traveled to a state sales.

Several years ago, I was among hundreds in Wilmot, New Hampshire at Poet, Donald Hall's

home.

I hoped to score a stash of correspondences, or notes left in his books, to find some

record offering insight into his writing process.

...