R2E Excerpt #36: Dreaming Dickens

To sleep, perchance to write Victorian novels in your dreams. I actually did that during my lazy afternoons in Paris. What a freak, right?

WHEN I WASN’T FALLING IN LOVE—with Paris, with random enchantresses on the street, with phantoms from my recent past—I was reading. A lot. But I wasn’t picking up A Sport and a Pastime or The Tropic of Cancer at Shakespeare and Company. Great Expectations and David Copperfield were more my speed, because their heroes were more likely to be virgins rathe…