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| photo: Mari Juliano | |
Harris Lahti's work has appeared in BOMB, the Baffler, Ninth Letter, Forever magazine, and elsewhere. He co-founded the press Cash 4 Gold Books, and edits fiction for Fence. His debut novel, Foreclosure Gothic (Astra House, June 10, 2025), is a multigenerational and deeply autobiographical gothic tale of Hollywood dreams and upstate New York reality.
Handsell readers your book in about 25 words:
Foreclosure Gothic is: a propulsive reimagining of the American gothic; a creepy family drama; an interrogation of good instincts gone awry, full of black comedy that verges onto horror.
On your nightstand now:
Rent Boy by Gary Indiana. Male prostitutes, drugs, and a plot to steal a kidney. A perfect mix of the profane and profound. It's sort of the perfect book; Indiana's voice could literally launch a rocket.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I read this in third grade and remember finishing it before school one day and weeping as my legs hung off the side of my bunkbed. It gutted me. There was my reading life before, then my reading life after.
Your top five authors:
Fleur Jaeggy, Roberto Bolaño, Nathanael West, Thom Jones, Shirley Jackson.
Book you've faked reading:
Septology by Jon Fosse. I mean, I've read the first two sections and loved them. But do I have to read the next five? No, seriously, do I?
Books you're an evangelist for:
I've given out more copies of Letters to Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth and The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan than a Jehovah's Witness handing out Bibles on the precipice of end times.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I don't think I've ever purchased a book because of the cover--though that might be a lie. The best covers work on you subconsciously; they provide a missing puzzle piece of yourself you might not even realize.
Book you hid from your parents:
I've been lucky; probably it's more likely there were books I'd read very young that my parents should've hid from me. During childhood, I remember a lot of vintage Playboy magazines and The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey floating around.
Book that changed your life:
The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones. All of Jones's collections are important to me. I found them at exactly the right time. Boxers, mystics, people struggling with bipolar disorder, amputees, middle-aged women dying from cancer--Jones's range of characters, his ability to harness their voices, showed me nothing is off limits, if done correctly. Sometimes all you need is permission.
Favorite line from a book:
"I've got eyes to shut in Michigan--maybe even Germany or China, I don't know yet. I walk, but I'm not scared. I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years." --from "Trilobites" by Breece D'J Pancake.
The present tense, the cadence, the way he splits his chest open and bears his pulsing heart for all. I'd be an entirely different person/writer without having read him--this story, in particular.
Five books you'll never part with:
Firework by Eugene Marten, The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, Last Vanities (it's better than Sweet Days of Discipline, I swear) by Fleur Jaeggy.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West. It's such a dark, reckless novel. It's sinister yet somehow manages to laugh at itself. I didn't see it coming. I could barely look at it dead on while reading it. It felt illegal somehow, daemonic, the first time I read it, like I'd encountered something I shouldn't: something sacred, something cursed. Maybe I'm a sick puppy, but I still look for that feeling everywhere.