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| photo: Gordon Grant | |
Tom Clavin was a reporter for 15 years for the New York Times and served as editor of weekly newspapers for 12 years before turning to writing full time. Four of his books have been New York Times bestsellers: Dodge City, The Heart of Everything That Is, Halsey's Typhoon and The Last Stand of Fox Company. Other recent titles include Lucky 666, Reckless, Valley Forge and All Blood Runs Red. His new book, Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride from Hell, just published by St. Martin's Press, completes the Frontier Lawmen trilogy that began with Wild Bill and Dodge City.
On your nightstand now:
Alas, 80% of the pile is, as usual, work-related. That is why it includes The Frontiersman by Meredith Mack Brown and How the West Was Lost by Stephen Aron, because my next book with Bob Drury involves Daniel Boone and American Indians in Ohio and Kentucky. My next solo project is about a pilot shot down over France in World War II, so the pile also includes Air War Europa by Eric Hammel and In the Shadows of War by Thomas Childers. When I do read for pleasure, I pluck from the pile the latest thriller featuring Joe Pickett, Harry Bosch, John Rebus, Amos Walker, Walt Longmire or Dave Robicheaux.
Favorite book when you were a child:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I loved this book because it excited my imagination and it had a smart, conflicted and courageous female protagonist, which opened my eyes and mind.
Your top five authors:
John Steinbeck is very much a personal favorite. I've read every novel by Jane Austen and hope to do so again. Same for Raymond Chandler, whose The Long Goodbye is a great and still underrated novel. Of contemporary authors, I think James Lee Burke is simply the best, but it's a close shave with Cormac McCarthy.
Book you've faked reading:
Whatever I'm asked to blurb. I'm kidding! Anything written in the 1800s by a Russian author. Sorry, Leo and Fyodor, you're just not for me, even though you had nothing to do with interfering in our elections.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I think Lonesome Dove is one of the best American novels ever. The excellent miniseries is what sticks in the minds of most people, but if you read the novel itself, you'll see that every description and line of dialogue is a revelation.
Book you've bought for the cover:
About 30 years ago, I bought a paperback by John D. MacDonald that had a rather lurid cover that promised cheap thrills. Then I became addicted to the Travis McGee series and refuse to go to rehab for it.
Book you hid from your parents:
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming.
Book that changed your life:
I feel like I've had at least several life-changing experiences thanks to books, but my immediate response has to be A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I've read it at least half a dozen times, beginning when I was 15, and each time I'm inspired to forge something significant in the smithy of my soul.
Favorite line from a book:
The Sun Also Rises, the last line: "Isn't it pretty to think so?" What Jake Barnes says to Brett Ashley is not only heartbreaking but sums up my tenuous hold on hope.
Five books you'll never part with:
In addition to the ones and others by authors I've cited previously: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Light in August by William Faulkner, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler, Middlemarch by George Eliot and the Civil War trilogy by Shelby Foote.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
If I can take this small liberty, I'd love to read the Horatio Hornblower series by C.S. Forester as though it was the first time. I have a clear recollection of cutting classes repeatedly in high school and hiding under the gym bleachers as I poured through Beat to Quarters, Ship of the Line and the others in that series. It was a very visceral experience that filled me with both the hope of being a writer and the fear that I might not become one and then what would I do.