The Speed Reader, or Grieving Quasimodo

… they found among all those hideous

carcasses two skeletons, one of which

held the other in its embrace.

—Victor Hugo

And my poor bar-ba-loots

are all getting the crummies

because they have gas

and no food in their tummies

—Theodor Seuss Geisel

I know a man who

claims to have devoured

every Tolstoy in half-a-day.

It took me half-a-decade

to get through the fucking Lorax.

Hugo, he said, was just a little

tougher. Spending 13 hours to

down both Hunchback and Les Mis. 

By the time I’d finished

a single Hardy Boys, they were

the Tardy Geezers, endeavouring

to solve who cheated during

Edith’s bingo night.

It’s possible that

he failed to be enamoured

with Esmerelda, that Quasimodo

only needed a chiropractor,

scoffing at the chance that even

the ugly can win at love,

no matter how scant the odds;

or maybe I’m the problem,

assuming that he doesn’t stop

to ponder, smell the thorns

before the roses, that he’s full of

bloated air—as if he’s got the

crummies; that he’s parroting

all the notes of Cliff & Coles;

yet if I were being candid,

he’s a far braver bloke

than I could hope to be—

my failing to finish the novel

because I cannot bear its end of

bone-on-bone; still clinging

to bar-ba-loots, 

eating their truffula

in my daily reveries, its trees the

shape of pom-poms—

held by cheering girls

my junior year, ones who

wiggled their hips while

I was muted in the bleachers—

alone & hot & bothered—

wishing I’d joined the reading

club instead, boasting

I would undertake

Cervantes’ Don Quixote; assailing

the whirling windmills like

some beast from a picture book.

Andreas Gripp

December 9, 2025

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