Free The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker Page A

Why?
    Well, of course, rhyme helps memory. But you can't allow yourself to get excited by that argument. Samuel Daniel used it, and Dryden used it, but it's not convincing. When I listen to something that rhymes well, I just like it. My memory for song lyrics isn't that strong, so the fact that the rhyme might help me remember the words is neither here nor there. First in importance is that the lines sound good. The sounding good comes before the utilitarian help of memorizability.
    "Sugar, you make my soul complete. Rapture tastes so sweet." That's from the same trance tune I mentioned. It's sung by Nadia Ali, from Pakistan.
    I CALLED ROZ and left a message asking if she'd like to come by and help me shampoo the dog. The flea shampoo is turquoise with sparkles and very thick. It's really a two-person job to put it on--one person to work in the suds and one person to hold Smacko's back and aim the shower sprayer. He keeps wanting to shake, spraying turquoise froth everywhere, and he will shake, unless one person keeps a steady, firm hand on the middle of his back.
    Roz called and said she'd be by at about six-thirty. I knew she would--she misses the dog like crazy, and who can blame her? I got out some chips and salsa and was sitting in the white plastic chair by the barn door when she drove up. I watched her walk up the driveway, looking very calm and elegant in her dog-washing outfit of jeans and a loose blue shirt with a paint splash on the sleeve. She stopped and said hello to Smacko and picked up something in the sand. I heard her bracelets jingle, a sound I hadn't heard in a while. "Here's a present from the driveway," she said, and she handed it to me. It was a fragment of old china with very fine rule-lines in blue against white. Bits of old china sometimes appear in the driveway as rains wash more of its sand away. I took off my glasses to look at it and thanked her. Then I offered her a chip.
    We washed the dog and didn't get too wet, and then she said she had to go. I asked her if maybe she'd like to stay and watch Bull Durham with me. She likes Bull Durham.
    "Is it done?" she asked, meaning the introduction.
    "It is not done. Nor will it ever be done, for I am not the one to do it."
    "Oh, poof," she said. "You just need to apply yourself."
    She didn't leave right away, at least. She smiled at the tablecloth. On it was my paperback of Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems, Volume 1 --I seem to be carrying it around the house with me. "So that's what she looks like," Roz said, tilting her head to see the picture on the cover better. It's the blue-tinted photograph in which Mary is wearing some kind of wonderful ulster with a zippered hood, and she's looking off, and she looks heartstoppingly French. "She's beautiful," Roz said. "Is that a recent picture?"
    She's about seventy now, I said, and living in Province-town.
    "Is she lesbian?"
    I said I believed she was, yes.
    "It's odd that the woman I most want to look like is a lesbian," she said. Then she said a long goodbye to Smacko and we hugged ceremonially and she drove away.
    I didn't want to watch Bull Durham, so I watched three episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Three's about my limit for one night.
    G ENE'S NEW EMAIL says that they're becoming "really concerned." I feel horrible about it. I don't want to disappoint him. Gene, I'm sorry. I apologize for this inexcusable slowness.
    If I could just die and rot in the ground it would be okay. I wouldn't have to write anything more. Die and rot and be completely dead. No worries. Everything's good. "Paul Chowder was at work on an anthology of rhyming poetry when he died." "Ah, too bad."
    The best use of the word "rot" that I can think of is from a poem by Coventry Patmore. He's sitting in a bay. He's just had some reversal, we're not sure what. The ocean and its waves are out there. He looks at them. What kind of ocean is it? It's a "purposeless, glad ocean." That's what first caught me, those two words,