Did he actually read War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, Catch 22, Candide, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Malcolm X biography and two other books during the single month of Feb 1969?? I find that a tad hard to believe... But whatever. I'm a pretty fast reader myself, so I'll take that as a challenge / inspiration for myself :)
It's entirely possible that he had nothing else to do but read that month. If there was no album currently in production and no tour going on -- both of those things seem plausible for that month -- then it was all available time.
The Great Gatsby is short. Candide is shorter. The Picture of Dorian Gray is fairly short. Each of them might have been read in a day or less. War and Peace is famously long, but at a normal reading pace of 200 words per minute it will only take 40-45 hours -- say, 10 days.
"Catch 22" was also presumably read for work, he played Nately in the film version that was in production in 1969: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/
War and Peace aside, most of those are pretty breezy reads, so if you’re laid-up sick for a couple weeks with nothing else to do it would be easy to blow through them all.
Well and honestly most of War and Peace is pretty easy and pleasant to read as well (I'm setting aside the philosophy-of-history stuff) -- there's just so much of it.
>Garfunkel began acting, and played Captain Nately in the Nichols film Catch-22 (1970). Simon was to play the character of Dunbar, but screenwriter Buck Henry felt the film was already crowded with characters and wrote Simon's part out.[83][84] Filming began in January 1969 and lasted about eight months, longer than expected.[85][86] The production endangered the duo's relationship;
Entirely possible since they weren't making music, touring or doing fuckall but wait for their part in the movie. Garfunkel's character doesn't have particularly crazy amounts of screen time either.
Lets say this is two thousand pages altogether (half of them is War and Peace). That would be 70 pages a day. This is doable even with a full time job. Certainly more than the average person reads, but easily done for an voracious reader with a flexible schedule.
I don't know how time consuming it was to be a folk music star, but they weren't expected to workout and train choreography all day, the way pop stars are today.
Despite its reputation War and Peace is actually a pretty easy read. Perhaps except the final essay with Tolstoy philosophy of history.
My wife reads a pretty consistent 200 books per year (not audio books). She's not a very fast reader. She's just very consistent, and reads anytime she has downtime, even in waiting rooms, etc.
