Item: 1 photocopied Edith Wharton story

This was a handout in one of my college classes, "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton.  I still have it because it's a superb short story, full of dramatic tension and a genius ending.  I wonder why I haven't ever really read much else by Edith Wharton.

Anyway, this is from the bottom drawer of a dresser - a drawer which I very rarely open because it's so heavy, and the frame of the dresser itself is not totally sturdy.  It's heavy because it's packed with papers, notebooks, clippings from the New Yorker or Harper's, manuscripts of my own, my college diploma, and the like.  There is in this drawer a great number of articles.  A lot of times I cut out and save articles only so that I can write something disagreeing with them.

I was wondering the other day what it would have been like if I had gone into academics, like I still sometimes have a hankering to do.  If I had pursued the study of literature as a discipline, where would that have led me?  I obviously would have gotten to spend a lot more time reading than I do now.  I think, too, that I was reluctant to go that direction because I knew that studying literature as a profession is a different thing than appreciating it as a reader.  I would gain an incredible depth and knowledge of the subject, but I would also sort of lose the ability to consider a book non-academically.  Or maybe not, I don't know.  That's one of the things I wonder.

What I should also be wondering, while I'm at it, is why everything that has to do with my literary aspirations is stuck in a bottom drawer that I never open.