'My First Literary Crush.' Terrible name, as the Rake says, but interesting content. Sam Lipsyte wins the prize:

Sam Lipsyte, author, Home Land
Simulations by Jean Baudrillard. It was the mid-1980s and this book could get you laid. Plus, reading about hyperreality was a great hangover cure.

George Saunders, Harold Bloom, Eric Alterman, ESPN's Bill Simmons, and Nicholson Baker also make appearances. (Ten bucks if you can guess what Bloom said.)

So you're dying to know: what was my first literary crush in college?

Gerry Canavan, author, nothing
Middle school belong to Douglas Adams, and high school belonged to Kurt Vonnegut -- but my first few years of college belonged entirely to Italo Calvino, whose If on a Winter's Night a Traveler I first read in Jean Barbaret's introductory comparative literature course the spring of my freshman year at Case, and which blew out the back of my skull. I'm still recovering.