CHAPTER TWO
Research must have its rituals of place and time if anything is to be accomplished. Fanaticism and obsession have to be anchored in calibrated habits that cannot be overwhelmed by bad weather, missing manuscripts, or the flu season. In a few weeks Harriet had developed her research routine and took the same seat in the back of the library’s reading room every morning by ten, behind a nun who read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry with unnerving attention. If weather permitted, Harriet jogged or roller skated from their Greenwich Village apartment to the library. Air and physical movement were the counterweight to the world of books she was forced to live in because the human imagination has spilled itself more on to the printed page than into any other form, and has left more of i
