The Man Who Reads Books For a Living (One Every Two Days)

As with any editor, reading is part of my job. But never have I been asked to do what’s expected of Clarke Speicher: read a novel in two days (or sometimes one), and prepare a lengthy memo detailing how it might be adapted into film. Sounds like a plush gig, right? Not so fast. Although Speicher enjoys his work, it exists on the margins of the lucrative entertainment industry, making it a true labor of love. For Lit Hub, Julien Levy profiles the man who reads everything.

As long as humanity is still valuable to the process of adaptation, Clarke will have work. That doesn’t mean he’s whipping around the Hollywood Hills in a convertible or power-lunching. Clarke lives in Gowanus, Brooklyn’s mostly industrial neighborhood. His home office is a narrow two-bedroom near an asphalt processing plant and a superfund site, both of which can be smelled with the windows open on a warm day. “Because of what I do and because I tip well, I think people have an inflated idea of how much money I make,” he says. “It’s volume.” I’ve seen him when things turned dire. When the notoriously fragile film industry’s gears stopped turning for one reason or another, he genuinely lost sleep, confidence, some sense of purpose. How would he pay his rent? Would he have to pack up more than two decades of work and life and move back to Delaware? All I could do at times like that was listen and discount his bar tab. But for right now, at least, the lights are on and the mill is humming.