Hungry

Except for a few short stories, I haven't read any fiction since Exit Ghost. I just haven't felt like it. But about an hour ago I had a sudden craving -- I wanted to read a novel. Not just any novel, though. Like a food craving, this craving was for something specific: something quick, rich, funny, and maybe historical. (Weird, I hardly ever read historical fiction.) I caught a glimpse of it: some people laughing, rain on a window... Sigmund Freud. Yes! I want to read a novel about Sigmund Freud!

Where does such a craving come from? Maybe the sudden change in weather -- after days of bizarre heat and humidity, today it's chilly and raining -- makes me want to recreate the experience of first reading The World As I Found It, a quickly moving (though deliciously long), rich, funny, historical novel. And I've been thinking about Lauren Slater's Opening Skinner's Box, a collection of essays about psychological experiments. It sounds so tasty: a novel like TWAIFI but about psychology. Has anyone written it??

I wonder how many people have written novels just because they had a particular craving to read something that didn't yet exist?