Times Warp

By

Irving Tobin reads at red lights. He reads in the dentist’s chair. At dinner parties when he finds the company boring, he tries to read at the table. Several years ago, Irving’s wife, Phyllis, came into the bedroom as he was getting dressed. She found him reading the paper, one leg suspended in the air, as he was pulling on a sock. Tobin reads the Times every day, struggling to find the two and a half hours necessary to get through it. He keeps stacks of newspapers in the front seat of his car and in spare cupboards, in case he finds himself without a paper in hand. Tobin is behind in his Times reading. One year, five months, and four days behind, which places him in late June, 2002. In his daily paper, the United States has not yet invaded Iraq, the D.C. sniper hasn’t fired a shot, and Gray Davis is secure in Sacramento. Tobin grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and still lives there, in a four-bedroom house on a quiet tree-lined street. Seventy-nine years old, he works most days at his law firm, a few minutes away. When he was younger, he worked as an accountant on the side. That’s how the trouble started. When he met Phyllis, in 1975, he read Time, the Elizabeth Daily Journal, and the Newark Star-Ledger. She introduced him to the Times. Soon he had to cut out his other reading. Then tax season came along. Every year, he fell behind, losing almost two months in March and April. “I realize I’m not going to catch up, but I like to believe I will,” he said the other day. When the Times went on strike in 1978, he lagged by only nine days. By 1998, he was almost two years behind, even though he had quit reading the Sports section years before. “I just had to give up something,” he said. He also skips Escapes and Circuits. Saturday is Tobin’s biggest reading day—he gets in about four hours, two before synagogue and two after lunch. “I make slight advances, but they’re very, very slight,” he said. He keeps up with current events by listening to the radio while he drives to work. If he thinks he might be about to learn the ending to a particular story he’s following, he will turn it off. He doesn’t want to spoil the suspense. In the upstairs hallway of the Tobins’ house, two bookcases are stacked high with yellowing newspapers. The piles are organized by month, each day’s paper divided into its sections. There are more papers in the bedroom: Tobin opened a tall cabinet next to his bed and revealed a stack that extends from floor to ceiling. In the breakfast room, a small pile on a chair waited to be sorted. Downstairs, in the living room, his wife’s library fills a long wall. “With a book, we not only read it—we have to keep it forever, as a souvenir,” he said, plucking out a long-undisturbed copy of “In Cold Blood.” “I try to retain information in my mind, not on a shelf. When I’m done with the paper, I throw it away.” Phyllis Tobin, a clinical psychologist with practices in Manhattan and Elizabeth, prefers not to diagnose her husband’s habit. “Irving’s the smartest guy I ever knew in my life,” she said. A few weeks ago, she lost a silver earring on the subway tracks. When she got home, she told her husband about it. The following weekend, he happened to read an old Times article that included instructions for retrieving items lost in the subway. He clipped it for Phyllis, and she followed the article’s advice. Two days later, she had her earring back.
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