The publication of Leaving the World (Atria, June 15, 2010), which has been well received in the U.K. and France, reintroduces Douglas Kennedy to American readers after a 10-year absence. Kennedy is the author of eight previous novels, including The Pursuit of Happiness. Born in Manhattan, he is the father of two children and divides his time between London, Paris and Maine.
On your nightstand now:
Cheever by Blake Bailey. Following on his superlative biography of Richard Yates, the very talented Blake Bailey turns his attention to the life and massive personal contradictions of the great chronicler of postwar suburban malaise. A biography with the narrative energy and density of a fine novel--and harrowing in its depiction of the many wars John Cheever waged with himself.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I would have to say the book--or, in this instance, the story--that had the most effect on me was Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," which my third grade teacher, Mrs. Flack, read to us at Downtown Community School off St Mark's Place in Manhattan. She prefaced the story by saying, "I think you're ready for this"--and then read this tale of an impoverished child who freezes to death while trying to stave off hunger by selling matches on the street. The effect was a bit like that moment when you first see Bambi's mother getting shot... the realization that there is a malevolent and tragic dimension to life. So while "The Little Match Girl" might not be a cheerful children's tale, it changed the way I looked at things at a rather young age. And I discovered thereafter that literature can have that bracing, perspective-shifting effect.
Your top five authors:
Gustav Flaubert, especially for Madame Bovary--the first great novel about boredom and domestic despair; Ernest Hemingway, because he changed the way we write prose in the English language; Graham Greene, a writer who wrote profoundly serious novels about man's search for redemption in a pitiless universe that were also page turners; Raymond Chandler, for the way he turned the hardboiled detective novel into a brilliant portrayal of America at its most venal and for the way he found a dark-alley poetry in American patois; and Richard Yates, the great underrated postwar American writer.
Book you've faked reading:
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. It has defeated me on several occasions.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, which I discovered in the early 1990s (long before the now-celebrated film) and which struck me as the most honest, unsparing, yet humane portrayal of personal self-entrapment as played out in the postwar Connecticut suburbs.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Oxford English Dictionary!
Book that changed your life:
Graham Greene's The End of the Affair--the novel that made me want to be a novelist.
Favorite line from a book:
"He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness, the sense that that is where we belong."--Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Cinema. As a great cinephile, I find this one of the most original and intelligent overviews of the cinema ever written. And even when I disagree with Thomson I am so impressed by his passion and perspicacity for the movies. It's also great fun.
