By the Book (51 page)

—
Arnold Schwarzenegger

My choice would be the classical Greek historian Thucydides, who devoted the latter part of his life to a book detailing the history of the long series of wars between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC. If I met him, I would be curious to discover whether he was really as devoid of humor as is his book. In his entire book there is not a single sentence that could be considered remotely humorous, no less a joke.

—
Jared Diamond

I would love to meet Mark Twain. What a character! I imagine him larger than life, sexy, handsome, full of energy, a grandiose storyteller, a fantastic liar, and a man of heart and principles. I would not ask him anything in particular; I would try to get him a little drunk (it should be easy) and then sit at his feet to listen to his stories.

—
Isabel Allende

Gary Shteyngart

What's the best book you've read recently? And your vote for best book of the last year?

Middlemarch
! Can you believe I read the whole thing? When I finished it I expected a Publishers Clearing House–type van to pull up to my house and some British people to pop out and present me with a medal and a case of sherry. I guess because of fiscal austerity in the UK, they don't have the budget for
Middlemarch
medals anymore.

Carl Hiaasen's
Bad Monkey
was my favorite book of 2013. He is the bard of South Florida. I've never had this much fun reading about a dismembered arm and a crazed chimp. I will read anything Hiaasen ever writes, even if it's written on the napkin of some filthy Key West crab house.

When and where do you like to read?

Reading is still my favorite pastime. It kicks writing's butt. You learn so much more from reading than you do from writing, although writing pays slightly more. I start reading at four p.m. and continue way into cocktail hour, which begins at four thirty.

Are you a rereader? What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?

I've read Nabokov's
Pnin
so many times the book no longer has a spine. Has there ever been a better novel written about a fumbling Russian émigré? I mean, like, why do I even bother?

You and your wife recently had a baby. How's that affected your reading life?

I've gone from
Middlemarch
to
Don't Bump the Glump!
, by Shel Silverstein. It's so nice to turn the pages of a real printed book with a small, sweet creature like my son, Johnny, by my side. I'm reminded of my father reading to me as a child, my head against his chest, letting the heavy Russian words thump in my ears. I only hope I generated the same kind of megawatt warmth against his skin as my son does against mine.

What kinds of stories are you drawn to? And how would you describe the kinds of books you steer clear of?

I like stories where people suffer a lot. If there's no suffering, I kind of tune out. After reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's memoir,
My Struggle
, I was shocked to discover that people suffer in Norway as well. Good for them!
Skal!

What kinds of characters draw you in as a reader? And as a writer?

I do have a weakness for funny characters who can't shut up to save their lives. Cue Portnoy.

Do you read a lot of contemporary Russian literature? Who are your favorite Russian writers, current or classic?

Russia is a nightmarish authoritarian state, which is always good for some laughs. Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide, and Russia's been a head-on collision for centuries. Vladimir Sorokin is currently my favorite Russian author, a distant heir of Nikolai Gogol, who wasn't bad either.

In addition to your books and short stories, you write for
Travel & Leisure
magazine. What, for you, is the appeal of travel writing? And who are your favorite travel writers?

I love getting out of the country. My parents spent most of their lives living in the USSR, where travel to the West was impossible and Poland was as far as my mother ever got until we emigrated. Getting paid to travel seems completely insane, but there it is, one of the luckiest careers I've ever stumbled upon. As for favorite travel writers, Paul Theroux's
The Great Railway Bazaar
remains the Old Testament of the genre.

What were your favorite books as a child? Are there any in particular you look forward to introducing your son to?

When I was five, I read
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and the Wild Geese
, by Selma Lagerlof. It was so inspiring I wrote my own version called
Lenin and His Magical Goose
, a hundred-page tome about Lenin encountering a socialist goose and conquering Finland together. It was commissioned by my grandmother, who paid for each page with a block of Soviet cheese. Even today, Random House pays me in cheese.

My son might have less Bolshevik tastes than I did growing up, so I think it's going to be all about this Seuss, MD, and his penchant for colored eggs.

Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

See the question above.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Definitely
Don't Bump the Glump!
, by Shel Silverstein. It's about how a great many creatures you encounter will try to eat you, even if you start out acting all bipartisan.

What does your personal book collection look like? Do you organize your books in any particular way?

No, it's a mess! Russian books, American books, architecture books. I like how they form nice colors together. It's important to talk to your books to remind them they still matter.

You've become quite an avid presence on Twitter. Are there other authors you like to follow on Twitter or elsewhere online?

So many! Among them @SalmanRushdie, @marykarrlit, @csittenfeld, @MargaretAtwood, @emilynussbaum, @CherylStrayed, @Mariobatali, @jenniferweiner, @judyblume, @JamesFrancoTV, @PGourevitch, @NathanEnglander, @plattypants (Adam Platt), @Rebeccamead_NYC, @susanorlean, @colsonwhitehead, @GilbertLiz (Elizabeth Gilbert), @JonathanAmes, @DavidEbershoff, @KBAndersen (Kurt Andersen), @SashaHemon, @jonleeanderson, @BananaKarenina (Elif Batuman), @walterkirn, @MollyRingwald, @John_Wray, @Tracy_Chevalier, @Darinstrauss, @mohsin_hamid, @michaelianblack, @JayMcInerney, @FrankBruni, @tejucole, @suketumehta, @AmyTan, @jacobwe (Jacob Weisberg), @EricAsimov, @poissel (Paul La Farge), @LukeBarr, @BretEastonEllis, @janiceylee, @askanyone (Sloane Crosley), @GarryShandling.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

As literary fiction's foremost blurber, I will never publicly admit to disliking a book. Do you know how hard it is to write one? Every time I see a writer crying on the streets of Brooklyn, I give her a hug and nine bucks for a latte at Connecticut Muffin. We're all in this together.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Dickens's
Bleak House
. What's wrong with me? On the other hand, I finished
Middlemarch
! So lay off me.

Gary Shteyngart
is the author of the novels
Super Sad True Love Story
,
Absurdistan
, and
The Russian Debutante's Handbook
. His most recent book is
Little Failure: A Memoir
.

 

I'd Prefer Not To

There's nothing I need or want to know from the writers I admire that isn't in their books. It's better to read a good writer than meet one.

—
John Irving

I'm useless when I meet writers I love—I go slack-jawed and stupid with awe. So I'm happy, even in my fantasy life, to give the Great Ones their space. It's enough to know them from what they put on the page.

—
Katherine Boo

That way lies disaster. Books are writers' way of becoming something else, something more, something greater. It might be that dinner with Dickens would be a disappointment. I've met some living writers who were just like their books, wonderfully, and others who ruined their books for me by being pompous and self-obsessed.

—
Anna Quindlen

I adore the company of other writers, because they are so often lively minds and, frequently, blazingly funny. And of course we get each other in a unique way. (That's probably a common feeling in all professions; certainly I know many lawyers who are bored by anybody who isn't an attorney.) But I haven't found my friendships with other writers to be especially revelatory about the literary process. Overall, I hold to the saying that “writers are better read than met,” meaning only that what makes them fascinating is on the page and not on their sleeves.

—
Scott Turow

The idea of meeting writers of the books I've read doesn't interest me. That is to say, I wouldn't go out of my way. If the book is alive to me, if the sentences speak to me, that's enough. A reader's relationship is with the book, with the words, not with the person who created it. I don't want the author to explain anything to me or to interfere.

—
Jhumpa Lahiri

Rachel Kushner

What's the best book you've read recently?

Twelve Years a Slave
, by Solomon Northup. An incredible document, amazingly told and structured. Tough, but riveting. The movie of it by Steve McQueen might be the most successful adaptation of a book ever undertaken; text and film complement each other wildly. I also recently read Michelle Alexander's
The New Jim Crow
and can't quit promoting it. That and
Golden Gulag
, by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, are important books that assess with deep and careful thought how we came to be a society of mass incarceration of people of color.

When and where do you like to read?

My most recent, best reading experience was a vacation last summer that involved reading feverishly in a friend's sixteenth-century stone cottage in the Corrèze, and doing the same in a cheap but airy hotel room overlooking the Corniche in Marseille. At home, I dedicate occasional whole days to reading as if I'm a convalescent. The ideal place for this is the bath, where the body floats free. Books go a little wavy, but they're mine, so who cares. Currently I'm deep in
Kippenberger: The Artist and His Families
, in this manner. It's very good. None of the usual biography clichés (“And yet his greatest disappointments were still to come.…”). And if you want to understand the art world, and cult of personality, it is a very instructive read.

What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?

I am a rereader. Quality is variety if you wait long enough. Barthes, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Céline, Duras, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Melville: There is so much to revisit.
Ingrid Caven
, by Jean-Jacques Schuhl, is always in rotation. I used to read
Morvern Callar
, by Alan Warner, every year—I adored that book. This past fall I reread the first two volumes of Proust (new Penguin translations). It was my third reread. I was teaching a Proust seminar at Syracuse, to MFA students of writing. To read for the purpose of leading a class called for a different way of looking at the volumes, more systematic. What I felt every week was that the system, the structure of metaphysical themes and concerns, was right there in the text, so natural to locate. In preparation I read, among other things, Edmund White's sweet and short biography of Proust and was so impressed by it. Edmund White might be a rare person of letters in an old-fashioned sense.