By the Book (8 page)

—
Joyce Carol Oates

I wrote to René Goscinny when I was seven or eight, a fan letter about Asterix. He wrote back, saying that he was very proud to have made a little English girl laugh.

—
Emma Thompson

I've written to lots of writers. Laurie Colwin, after reading and foisting
Happy All the Time
many times. I saved her note for twenty years. Alice Adams wrote a sweet note to me after my first novel came out when I was twenty-six, and I was so blown away that I sent her a bunch of stamps by return mail. I have no idea what I was thinking. It was a star-struck impulse.

—
Anne Lamott

I get hundreds of very sweet, heartfelt letters from parents thanking me for getting their kids reading. Each one absolutely makes my day—make that my week. Many, many women thank me for getting their husbands reading, or reading again. Occasionally, a husband thanks me for getting his wife reading, but that's rare.

—
James Patterson

As a teenager I wrote to R. A. Lafferty. And he responded, too, with letters that were like R. A. Lafferty short stories, filled with elliptical answers to straight questions and simple answers to complicated ones. Not a lot of people have read him, and even fewer like what he wrote, but those of us who like him like him all the way. We never met.

—
Neil Gaiman

An Italian reader wrote to describe how he met his wife. She was on a bus, reading one of my books, one that he himself had just finished. They started talking, they started meeting. They now have three children. I wonder how many people owe their existence to their parents' love of books.

—
Ian McEwan

Richard Ford

What book is on your night stand now?

A Good Man in Africa
, by William Boyd.

When and where do you like to read?

Not in bed. Long airplane rides are good. Early mornings before things get going.

What was the last truly great book you read?

A Writer at War
, by Vasily Grossman. Grossman's diaries and journalism from the Eastern Front. Riveting and immensely humane.

Are you a fiction or a nonfiction person? What's your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I'm an equal opportunity reader—although I don't much read plays. And since I was raised a Presbyterian, pretty much all pleasures are guilty.

What book had the greatest impact on you? What book made you want to write?

Probably
Absalom, Absalom!
, Faulkner's masterpiece. I read it when I was nineteen. It embossed into my life the experience of literature's great saving virtue. Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing.

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

A book of mine. What else? What am I, an altruist? He can choose which one.

What are your reading habits? Paper or electronic? Do you take notes?

I read “book” books—the ones between covers. And I mark 'em all up. They're mine, after all. Though I'm not opposed to e-books. It's not a moral issue for me.

Do you keep the books you read? Collect, store, shelve—or throw away, lend out, donate?

I mostly keep my books. I go back often to ones I've read, and so want them around. I've spent thousands of dollars just moving books here and there. Although … many books that come to me unasked-for I give to the library. I never sell books.

Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?

I'm not a tough cry under any circumstances. And like the saying goes, “stand-up's hard.” I like to be taught things. Plus, I've got enough distracting me without my reading only doing that.

What was the last book that made you cry?

My own book
Canada
made me cry the last time I read it. If it was any good, it should've. Beyond that, the very last book that made me cry was more than one poem in James Wright's collected poems,
Above the River
.

What were your favorite books as a child? Is there one book you wish all children would read?

Rick Brant science mysteries. That said, being dyslexic, I wasn't a great reader when I was a kid. And since I don't have children, I don't know what they should read. Probably something their parents would disapprove of.

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?

Overrated … Joyce's
Ulysses
. Hands down. A professor's book. Though I guess if you're Irish it all makes sense. I put down most books, unfinished. Most books aren't very good, and there's no reason they should be. Whatever “talent” may be, it isn't apportioned democratically. Happily, I don't remember the last not-very-good book I didn't finish. Although (which is why I don't review books) sometimes I return to a book I've left unfinished and discover—pleasurably—that it was I, not the book, that was unsatisfactory.

What is your favorite story collection? Do you tend to read more short fiction or novels?

I read both, undifferentiated. Probably high on my list (though I don't generally think of favorites) would be Cheever's
Collected
and Isaac Babel's
Collected
. Eudora Welty, too. If you asked me tomorrow, I might answer differently. William Trevor. Pritchett.
Dubliners
. Alice Munro. Deborah Eisenberg. Ann Beattie. Donald Barthelme. Mavis Gallant. Chekhov. There are some awfully good story collections around.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? Have you ever written to an author?

I've written to lots of authors—fan letters. From the heart. And I suppose I'd love to have met Ford Madox Ford (no relation, alas). Such a big, messy, compelling, brilliant character. My kind of guy (though, of course, it would probably have turned out disastrously, as many things in his life did).

Which of the books you've written is your favorite? Your favorite character?

With all due respect, I wrote them all as hard as I could, did my best. That question is best left for readers—if I have any.

Any chance you'll return to Frank Bascombe?

I make notes for Frank all the time, carrying them (and “him”) around with me daily. As of now, that seems like enough to do.

What's the best book about sports ever written?

Gee, I've read pretty few.
A Fan's Notes
, by Frederick Exley.
The Glory of Their Times
, by Lawrence S. Ritter. Pretty much any of Roger Angell's collections.

Do you think of yourself as a regional writer? Your books tend to be very much about place—whether it's New Jersey, the South, or the West. And do you enjoy reading regional literature?

Maybe I'm a serial regional writer. First here, then there, across the map. When I stopped thinking of setting books in the South—where I was born—I did it both because I didn't think I had anything new to tell about the South (Faulkner and Welty and Percy and Hannah and twenty other wonderful writers had already done it better than I could) and because I wanted to find a wider audience and take on different concerns from those the South seemed to invite—that is, invite me. And I don't really think about books as being “regional” or not. I just think of them as being either good or not good.

What do you plan to read next?

Bird Alone
, by Sean O'Faolain.

Richard Ford
is the author of
The Sportswriter
,
Independence Day, Canada,
and
The Lay of the Land,
among other novels.

 

Childhood Reading

When I was a kid, I drew a lot, so I gravitated to oversized books with a lot of artwork—books about giants, gnomes, Norse myths, and space travel. There was one called
21st Century Foss
, full of incredible imaginings of spaceships and future cities, all with radical and organic shapes. I hadn't seen it in thirty years and recently bought it on eBay. Looking at those pictures again was like reliving dreams I had when I was eight years old.

—
Dave Eggers

I loved Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. Donald Sobol passed recently, and that really brought it all back to me, how important his books were to my little self. I didn't learn to read until I was seven, so I missed out on the early stuff, jumped right to chapter books, right to Encyclopedia Brown. What I loved about Boy Detective Leroy Brown was that (1) he was unabashedly smart (smart was not cool when and where I grew up) and (2) his best friend was a girl, tough Sally Kimball, who was both Leroy's bodyguard and his intellectual equal. Sobol did more to flip gender scripts in my head than almost anybody in my early years.

—
Junot Díaz

My sister and I loved Encyclopedia Brown, the fifth-grade nerd/observer who seldom took more than a day to unravel the nefarious conspiracies of childhood. Every child detective requires a sidekick, obviously, and I thought Encyclopedia's sidekick, Sally Kimball, was way cooler than any of Nancy Drew's. In addition to being smart, Sally was the only kid in town who could beat up Bugs Meany. But as a child I treasured the idea of this infinitely just place called Idaville. In Idaville the weak were rarely bullied for long, and the bad guys didn't get away.

—
Katherine Boo

I have tattoos from children's books all over my arms and torso. The biggest one is of Ferdinand the bull, which Elliott Smith also had, but his was a different page. What a good message that book has! Just be yourself and don't gore anyone with your horns if you don't feel like it.

—
Lena Dunham

The D'Aulaires'
Norse Gods and Giants
.
The Phantom Tollbooth
.
A Wizard of Earthsea
.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
.
Harriet the Spy
. John Christopher's Tripods trilogy. Bradbury's
R Is for Rocket
.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
. I loved trickster heroes … and Holmes.

—
Michael Chabon

A Wrinkle in Time
saved me because it so captured the grief and sense of isolation I felt as a child. I was eight years old when it came out, in third grade, and I believed in it—in the plot, the people, and the emotional truth of their experience. This place was
never
a good match for me, but the book greatly diminished my sense of isolation as great books have done ever since. I must have read it a dozen times.

—
Anne Lamott

We constantly read these terribly violent stories by the Grimm Brothers. I mean, the cleaned-up versions of these are nowhere near the horror stories we used to read. It's no wonder my brother was a total scaredy-cat and afraid to walk home alone after you realize he had been exposed to the tales of the Grimm Brothers.

—
Arnold Schwarzenegger

I was a very unliterary child, which might reassure parents with kids who don't read. Lego was my thing, as well as practical books like
See Inside a Nuclear Power Station
. It wasn't till early adolescence that I saw the point of books and then it was the old stalwart,
The Catcher in the Rye
, that got me going.

—
Alain de Botton

Colin Powell

What book is on your night stand now?

The Summer of 1787
, by David O. Stewart. As I grow older, I am increasingly fascinated by our founding fathers. The challenges they faced and the compromises they made, good and bad, to create a nation have inspired us and people around the world. I wish today's political leaders, especially in Washington, would show the courage and willingness to fight for what they believe in, but possess an understanding of the need to compromise to solve the nation's problems. They all need to go off and read
1787
.