Alice LaPlante teaches at San Francisco State University and Stanford
University, where she was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and held a Jones
Lectureship. Raised in Chicago, she now lives with her family in Northern
California.
On your nightstand now:
Room by Emma Donoghue. I haven't actually started it yet, but have high expectations; Men at Arms, the first book in Evelyn Waugh's Sword at Arms trilogy, which I am reading for the umpteenth time to marvel at Waugh's wit and brevity; and Father of the Rain by Lily King. My editor, Elisabeth Schmitz, gave it to me, and I swallowed it in a single sitting.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit.
Your top five authors:
Alice Munro; Denis Johnson; Joy Williams; Evelyn Waugh (as you can guess from my comments above); Anthony Burgess (how on earth has he fallen from sight?).
Book you've faked reading:
I hope I don't sound superior, but I don't fake it. It's too easy to get busted by smart undergraduates.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. I frequently use it in teaching and learn from it every time.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. What an amazing photograph, but it somewhat misrepresents the book.
Book that changed your life:
Howards End by E.M. Forster. It was the first of Forster's books I read. I was completely bowled over by his generosity, intelligence, and humanity. I felt recognized.
Favorite line from a book:
From "Helpin" by Robert Stone. Elliot, having just fallen off the wagon after two years of sobriety, recalls a line from Medea: "Old friend, I have to weep. The gods and I went mad together and made things as they are."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
A professor of mine at Stanford, Nancy Packer, told me more than a decade ago that she was looking forward to the forgetfulness of old age so she could discover Trollope again. It took me five years to get around to reading him. And I understood precisely what she meant. For myself, I'd choose Jane Austen's Persuasion. I love the dark undercurrent of the narrative, the sense that Anne is dangerously near the abyss. Although when I reread the book, I'm always relieved when Captain Wentworth rescues Anne in the end. It seems to me that Austen is struggling with demons that weren't acknowledged in her earlier work. Or maybe my own efforts to come to terms with middle age make me project things into the text that aren't there. Nevertheless, I would be delighted to read it with fresh eyes.