On your nightstand now:
I have so many book-covered nightstands it's a wonder I don't end up buried alive. The three books nearest to me lately are The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Thomas Wolfe. The "Thomas" part is completely coincidental.
I love Mann's devotion to time and space--the characters, the reader's, his own. The Magic Mountain is epic but never dull. It's intoxicating but relaxing, like a glass of fine wine. Hardy is more coy. With every sentence I read, I can almost "see" what's been plucked out. Like paper cuttings around his feet. His descriptions are vivid but not too exact. And the landscape is like a character, like the world has legs. He's very respectful of nature's energy--it's not incidental to plot. And with Wolfe, I admire the way he has grappled again and again with matters of authenticity and accuracy.
I'm currently writing about the Vietnam era, so I've also been reading from a variety of sources. The Fifties and The Sixties by critic and writer Edmund Wilson is a strangely illuminating series of journal entries. I like the unguarded view into the mind of an established white man. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is great for its use of voice and for its description of the dissolution of the barriers between systems. Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown is lovely for its pace, clarity and its admission of subjectivity. It is one man's experience, not all men's. And The Women's Room by Marilyn French, which I have yet to read.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I loved the first of The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner for its description of orphans making a home out of found objects. I was the only child of divorced parents, and we were poor, so I loved the whole "making something out of nothing" element.
Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth struck all the right notes for me--morally, philosophically, intellectually. I was transformed by the idea of boredom and insularity as selfish things, and wonder, acceptance, and willingness to risk as generous ones. Though I couldn't have been more than nine or 10, it shaped my sense of citizenship.
Another work that made a deep impression was Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop. My fourth-grade teacher, a wonderful lady named Barbara O'Reilly, read it aloud in class in about 1972. The book is based on a true story that occurred during World War II about 20 French schoolchildren who provide refuge to 10 Jewish children. At the time there wasn't as much known about the Holocaust as there is now, so it had a tremendous impact on me. I was overwhelmed.
Your top five authors:
James Joyce for writing like a painter; Jane Austen for writing like an anthropologist; John Steinbeck for writing like a citizen; Marguerite Duras for writing like a filmmaker; and Charles Dickens for writing with love and leniency for even the worst of his characters. And of course there's Shakespeare. And the Russians.
Book you've faked reading:
I can't say I've ever faked reading. However, there are books I struggle with. I hate to be obvious, but Ulysses is a tough one. And I'm ashamed to admit that I'm not so good with poetry.
Book you're an evangelist for:
If by "evangelist," you mean buying copies of the book to hand out to others, forcing them to start reading while you're standing there, judging their interest as inadequate, then grabbing the book back in order to impress upon them all that they are missing through a little impromptu recital, I'd say without question: Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo and The War by Marguerite Duras. For nonfiction it would probably be The Gift by Lewis Hyde.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I collect rare books, so I buy most of the fiction for the covers. Except rare children's science books. Those I buy for the awesome art on the inside.
Book that changed your life:
There is so much reading to do in one lifetime that I find myself making distinct choices about how I spend the hours and what voices I allow to gain entry into my mind and imagination. So taken in bulk, everything I've read has affected my life.
But being very bold here, I'm going to say Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw. I was about 13 years old. Thirteen is a cagey age, a secretive age, an age you never hear much about. And for good reason. You're really on the brink--of something, who knows what. It was summer in the Bronx. My neighborhood was a completely level, filthy, concrete landscape. It was actually a bus and garbage truck route. The world there was fast, but low and small. It moved like a clock, like a clock inside a clock. Like it had no idea of time beyond its own. Rich Man, Poor Man transported me to the South of France. I distinctly remember thinking, "My God, there's a world out there." And the South of France? I went as soon as fate and fortune allowed--I was 15 years old.
Favorite line from a book:
I have about a million. I read with a pen and underline constantly. My most recent favorite is from Romeo and Juliet, which I just re-read yesterday. I like when they find the dead bodies at the end and the prince says: "Where be these enemies? Capulet, Montague, see what a scourge is laid upon your hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love. And I, for winking at your discords too, have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished." It made me think instantly of feuding factions of Americans, of caustic and divisive language leading to actual tragic consequences, and of what might be sacrificed in the process. I also love when the prince quiets them first, saying, "Seal up the mouth of outrage for a while, Till we can clear these ambiguities."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I have an uncanny ability to forget what I've read. The specifics, that is; the themes stick forever, like tattoos. If I wait long enough, I can pretty much re-read anything. I just re-read all of Austen. One book after another, voraciously. I was like, "Wow, this woman is amazing." Meanwhile, I've read them many times before. The next book I intend to read again as if for the first time is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gábriel García Marquez.
