IT'S ONLY A HOBBY
Epstein, Joseph
Casual IT’S ONLY A HOBBY I recently went to a new physician, a dermatologist, for a minor problem, but before seeing her, I had to fi ll out a longish form setting out my and my parents’...
...I have no hobbies, yet, chary of leaving the space blank, I wrote in “Cultivating and collecting grievances...
...I know another man who pays a pit crew $16,000 on a weekend so that he can enter drag races for a purse of usually not more than $3,000...
...One thinks of mature hobbies as pure diversion and calm-inducing: an older gentleman cultivating his prizewinning roses, a woman quilting with Mozart’s fl ute and harp concerto playing in the background...
...But I have to wonder what such a hobby, for me, might be...
...On the hunt full time for copy, material, something to write about, he doesn’t need to collect anything, or play at anything...
...JOSEPH EPSTEIN...
...Collecting matchbook covers...
...A boy named Bob Grimm had an impressive collection of miniature cars...
...The absence of hobbies from my life, let me quickly assert, is not among these grievances...
...Would my having a hobby make me more relaxed, a sweeter character generally...
...I do not doubt that this is so...
...I have a friend who has a collection of 78-rpm records in excess of 150,000, more than half kept in the basement of his home, the rest in a warehouse...
...All went smoothly enough until the very last question, which asked about my hobbies...
...How can he have a hobby, really, when the entire world is his hobby...
...in them they claim to fi nd their truest selves...
...Performing complicated card tricks...
...The writer’s work and his play, if he is lucky, are one...
...Wearing them, I don’t recall anyone asking me if he could see my butterfl y collection...
...Joining a fantasy football league...
...A hobby sets off leisure from work, signaling a cooling dive into the pool of tranquility...
...I briefl y had an editor, acclaimed for his genius in creating the bestseller Jaws, who kept bees in his basement in a brownstone on the west side of Manhattan...
...The New York Times used occasionally to run pieces called Newsmakers, which were profiles of men and women then prominently in the news...
...Possibly...
...I lived, I now see, in that distant country known as my own mind, where no hobbies were required...
...I wonder if the problem isn’t my vocation...
...A store opened in our neighborhood called Hobby Models, which sold kits for making model airplanes, electric trains and the rich collection of paraphernalia that went with them, battery-driven racing cars, and all the other stuff that was supposed to interest a young boy but somehow left me indifferent...
...I never had a hobby, don’t have one now, and the notion of fi nding a suitable hobby has never occurred to me...
...People usually used this rubric to establish themselves as cultivated...
...I suppose I could count Reading as my hobby, but I read so much, it is so central to my existence, that, were I to do so, I might as well add Breathing as another of my hobbies...
...Some found hours of enjoyment in chemistry sets...
...In grammar school many of my classmates had hobbies and collections...
...It’s only a hobby,” as the punch line for an old Jewish joke has it...
...A writer’s life tends to be seamless, and he doesn’t divide it between work and leisure...
...Designing my own clothes...
...I was frankly stumped...
...Some boys had large collections of marbles, or “mibs,” as we called them...
...A few kids had stamp collections...
...Many saved baseball cards, which, if in later life their wives didn’t insist they pitch them out, may well be worth vast sums today...
...I had none of these things, I did none of these things, I had no need of any of these things...
...Most every night, after work, he checks into various usedrecord stores looking for still more...
...They feel most alive in their hobbies...
...Reading and long country walks” was not an uncharacteristic answer to the hobby question...
...Artfully photographing grass, sand, and leaves...
...Hobbies” was among these facts...
...The pleasure they bring to those who adore their hobbies is perhaps greater than any available to them in their working or family lives...
...I have over the years met people with some out of the way hobbies...
...Other boys my age could delicately wield an X-Acto blade across balsam to form the fuselage of a model plane...
...Casual IT’S ONLY A HOBBY I recently went to a new physician, a dermatologist, for a minor problem, but before seeing her, I had to fi ll out a longish form setting out my and my parents’ medical history...
...Light blue, soft cotton with a thick elastic waistband, they were essentially pajamas that could be worn on the street...
...The closest I have come is early in the 1950s, when I owned an extraordinarily comfortable pair of trousers known as hobby jeans...
...Accompanying the profi le was a box which set out the main facts of their lives...
Vol. 13 • June 2008 • No. 40
