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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Foreword by Scott Turow

  Introduction by Pamela Paul

  DAVID SEDARIS

  LENA DUNHAM

  NEIL GAIMAN

  MARY HIGGINS CLARK

  DREW GILPIN FAUST

  CARL HIAASEN

  JOHN IRVING

  ELIZABETH GILBERT

  RICHARD FORD

  COLIN POWELL

  DAVE EGGERS

  SYLVIA NASAR

  IRA GLASS

  JUNOT DÍAZ

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  NICHOLSON BAKER

  EMMA THOMPSON

  MICHAEL CHABON

  JEFFREY EUGENIDES

  J. K. ROWLING

  DAVID MITCHELL

  JOHN GRISHAM

  P. J. O’ROURKE

  ANNE LAMOTT

  IAN MCEWAN

  LEE CHILD

  ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

  FRANCINE PROSE

  JARED DIAMOND

  ALAIN DE BOTTON

  DAVE BARRY

  KATHERINE BOO

  MARILYNNE ROBINSON

  SHERYL SANDBERG

  CAROLINE KENNEDY

  ISABEL ALLENDE

  ANNA QUINDLEN

  JONATHAN FRANZEN

  HILARY MANTEL

  WALTER MOSLEY

  KHALED HOSSEINI

  JEANNETTE WALLS

  DAN BROWN

  DAN SAVAGE

  CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

  CURTIS SITTENFELD

  JAMES MCBRIDE

  JAMES PATTERSON

  JONATHAN LETHEM

  JHUMPA LAHIRI

  RICHARD DAWKINS

  STING

  ANDREW SOLOMON

  MALCOLM GLADWELL

  SCOTT TUROW

  DONNA TARTT

  ANN PATCHETT

  AMY TAN

  BRYAN CRANSTON

  MICHAEL CONNELLY

  NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

  E. L. DOCTOROW

  CHANG-RAE LEE

  GARY SHTEYNGART

  RACHEL KUSHNER

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  About the Editor

  Copyright

  Teddy, this one’s for you.

  Foreword by

  Scott Turow

  I arrived at Amherst College as a freshman in 1966, possessed by the dream of becoming a novelist, which was immediately when I learned that there were no classes in creative writing in the curriculum. (Naturally, I could have discovered the same thing by paying more attention to the course catalog rather than to the splendid physical setting that had made me fall in love with the school. But I was seventeen.) In time, English professors explained to me that instruction in fiction or poetry writing was worthless, offering no more intellectual content than auto shop or basket weaving.

  Eventually, the college relented and hired its first visiting writer, the fine English poet Tony Connor, in 1968. I consulted him eagerly, but he shook his head as soon as he heard me out.

  “Scott, I know noo-thing about writing noovels,” he said in the potent accent of his native Manchester, “but if I wanted to be a noovelist, I’d stoof myself with noovels.”

  I didn’t need Tony’s encouragement to read. I remember lying in bed for two weeks as a freshman, enthralled with The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell, whose four volumes I tore through to the detriment of my classes and assignments.

  Yet Tony’s remark was a mandate to read another way. Novels, he was telling me, were going to be my best teacher. From the work of other novelists I’d learn to define my taste, to judge what authorial strategies worked or didn’t, to figure out how good sentences and paragraphs and stories were constructed. For years after that, I didn’t merely read, I reread, then read again, writers and passages that filled me with wonder. Tillie Olsen. James Joyce. Robert Stone. I must have read Updike’s Rabbit, Run five times and Bellow’s Herzog even more than that, thinking about the choices that governed every word, each chapter. Over time, the comparison with my own work also made me recognize what was sadly out of reach.

  To some degree, reading is an instrumental activity for all of us. While most readers don’t try to mine the secrets of craft in the determined way I did, all of us experience a minute, incremental intellectual bonus every time our eyes cross a page. Neuroscientists almost certainly will be researching for decades how our sense for the nuances of language and syntax expands, how we gather and contrast constellations of ideas from what we consume as readers.

  Yet for most of us, writers and readers, the passion for books goes in the category of an enigmatic and sui generis desire. Even for those of us who have made our way by putting words on paper, the commitment to literature has almost always preceded the urge to write. In my own By the Book interview (here), I recount how my will to be a novelist began to form the first time I was totally captured by a novel. That was at age ten when I read The Count of Monte Cristo, by the older Alexandre Dumas. If it was that exciting to read a book, I reasoned, then it had to be even more thrilling to write one, to feel the story come to life inside you over an extended period of time. But it was a long while, with many more novels taking hold of me, before I actually tried writing fiction myself.

  I read most of these columns as they appeared, because they have become my favorite part of The New York Times Book Review. I relish the company of other writers, maybe for the same reason dogs love other dogs. Yet over the years I’ve come to realize that what an individual writer has to say about his or her creative process will tell me as much about how to write as the body styling on a car is liable to reveal about how its engine runs. On the other hand, what someone reads is almost always telling. One of the saddest parts of the portended decline of physical books is losing the self-revelation that people casually—or sometimes with great calculation—make with the volumes they place in view on their shelves.

  When the reader is a writer I admire, there is even more news contained in her or his reading habits. At a minimum, I’m likely to hear about or recall a book I think I should read, an opinion that gathers force when the suggestion repeats what I’ve heard before. More subtly, a fine writer’s reading passions are often a window into his or her mind and the deeper process of literary taste and judgment that may not be visible on the page.

  Because Pamela Paul, who edited these columns for the Book Review, often put the same questions to a number of participants, I couldn’t help being struck by certain answers. When I responded that among writers living or dead, I’d choose to hang around with Shakespeare, I knew I wasn’t being particularly original, just honest. Yet I was cheered to realize that my fantasy was shared by at least ten other respondents, each of whom I greatly admire.

  Even more interesting to me were the answers to the Book Review’s question about the works individual writers found particularly remarkable or disappointing, especially the varied responses about James Joyce’s Ulysses. One thing I thought I’d learned as a college freshman was that Ulysses held the number one ranking in the race for the title of Greatest Novel Ever Written. Outsized reverence for Joyce’s work seemed to have begun decades before with T. S. Eliot’s pronouncement, “I hold this book to be the most important expression which the present age has found.” Even a novelist as seemingly different from Joyce as Hemingway had named Ulysses as the last book that had influenced his writing.

&nbs
p; The summer after my freshman year I found myself working as a substitute mail carrier in one of the tony North Shore suburbs outside Chicago. The post office was an intriguing place (just see short stories by Eudora Welty and Herman Melville). I discovered, after a steep learning curve, that I could sort and deliver the mail on my route in less than the eight hours allotted for the job, but I made the mistake of returning to the post office early only once. I received a very colorful lecture from the chief clerk, who dragged me down to the employee lunchroom in the basement and explained how poorly my colleagues would regard me if I dared show up again before 3:15 p.m., when I was scheduled to punch out.

  As a result, I hid in the only air-conditioned public building in town: the library. With an hour or two to spare each afternoon, I decided to improve myself by reading the Greatest Novel Ever Written. During my six weeks with Ulysses, I had a number of observations. First, I swooned over many of the most gorgeous sentences I’d ever encountered. Second, unlike other works by Joyce that I’d adored, like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or “The Dead” in Dubliners, Ulysses didn’t seem to be a novel in the narrow way I thought of that form, that is, as a story which would carry me along because of my emotional connection with one or more characters. I had to work at Ulysses, so much so that it seemed somewhat fitting that the taxpayers of the United States were paying me $2.52 an hour while I read it. Finally, it was startling but instructive that in an affluent community with a sky-high educational level, the library’s lone copy of Ulysses was on the shelf every time I went to find it. I spent many years after that wondering whether Joyce’s book could really be the greatest novel ever written if no one else in town wanted to read it.

  As the frequent mentions of Ulysses in the pages that follow reveal, the novel is no longer the object of universal admiration within the literary community. It retains many fans, but there are also more than a few very fine writers who have their qualms—take a look at what Richard Ford says, for instance. The contrast with the continued reverence for Shakespeare from so many writers is striking. As I like to say, all literature is contemporary literature. It is read and preserved by those to whom it continues to speak. And the Bard’s unique genius has stirred yet another generation, while Joyce’s experiments seem to some experienced readers to be modernist failures.

  But whether a given writer likes or abhors a given book, all writers probably would concede that, to an extent infinitesimal or great, they are who they are because of every one of the books with which they’ve “stoofed” themselves during their lifetimes.

  Introduction by

  Pamela Paul

  We all want to know what other people are reading. We peer at strangers’ book covers on an airplane and lean over their e-books on the subway. We squint at the iPhone of the person standing in front of us in the elevator. We scan bestseller lists and customer reviews and online social reading sites. Asking someone what she’s read lately is an easy conversational gambit—and the answer is almost bound to be more interesting than the weather. It also serves an actual purpose: we may find out about something we want to read ourselves.

  When I launched By the Book in The New York Times Book Review, it was an effort to satisfy my own genuine, insatiable desire to know what others—smart people, well-read people, people who are good writers themselves—were reading in their spare time. The idea was to stimulate a conversation over books, but one that took place at a more exalted level than the average watercooler chat. That meant starting big, and for me that meant David Sedaris. Who wouldn’t want to know which books he thinks are funny? Or touching or sad or just plain good?

  In coming up with the questions for David Sedaris, and then for those who followed, I decided to keep some consistent—What book would you recommend to the president to read?—while others would come and go. If you’re going to find out what books John Grisham likes, you’ve got to ask about legal thrillers. When talking to P. J. O’Rourke, you want to know about satire.

  Similarly, the range of writers for By the Book had to sweep wide, to include relative unknowns and new voices alongside the James Pattersons and Mary Higgins Clarks. That meant poets and short story writers and authors of mass market fiction. And while the most obvious, and often most desirable, participants would be authors themselves, I didn’t want to limit the conversation to book people.

  For that reason, I went to Lena Dunham (not an author at the time) next. I asked musicians like Pete Townshend and Sting, scientists and actors, the president of Harvard, and even an astrophysicist. Cross-pollination between the arts—and the sciences—is something many of us haven’t experienced since our college days, and I wanted to evoke some of that excitement of unexpected discovery—in the subjects, in the questions, and in the answers.

  Once the ball got rolling, an unexpected discovery on my part was the full-throttle admiration our most respected public figures have for one another. Colin Powell marveled over J. K. Rowling’s ability to endure the spotlight. Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Donna Tartt were all consumed by the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St. Aubyn. (He, in turn, was reading Alice Munro.) Writer after writer extolled the reportorial prowess of Katherine Boo. And then Boo, who told me she read the column religiously, praised Junot Díaz and George Saunders and Cheryl Strayed when it was her turn.

  When I’d meet writers at book parties or literary lunches, they’d thrill over what other By the Book subjects had said about their work. In her interview, Donna Tartt told me how much she looked forward to reading Stephen King’s new novel—before he’d raved about The Goldfinch on our cover. In a world that can feel beset by cynicism, envy, and negative reviews, By the Book has become a place for accomplished peers to express appreciation for one another’s art.

  Then there are the humanizing foibles. The books we never finished or are embarrassed never to have picked up, the books we hated, the books we threw across the room. It’s not just us. Many writers confess here to unorthodox indulgences (Hilary Mantel adores self-help books) and “failures” of personal taste (neither Richard Ford nor Ian McEwan has much patience for Ulysses).

  Reading the interviews gathered together for the first time, I found myself flipping back and forth between pages, following one author to another, from one writer’s recommendation to another’s explication of plot, like browsing an endlessly varied, annotated home library in the company of thoughtful and erudite friends. I learned about mutual loves, disagreements, surprise recommendations, unexpected new voices, forgotten classics. Let the conversation begin.

  David Sedaris

  What book is on your night stand now?

  I was a judge for this year’s Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, so until very recently I was reading essays written by clever high school students. Now I’ve started Shalom Auslander’s Hope: A Tragedy. His last book, Foreskin’s Lament, really made me laugh.

  When and where do you like to read?

  Throughout my twenties and early thirties—my two-books-per-week years—I did most of my reading at the International House of Pancakes. I haven’t been to one in ages, but at the time, if you went at an off-peak hour, they’d give you a gallon-sized pot of coffee and let you sit there as long as you liked. Now, though, with everyone hollering into their cellphones, it’s much harder to read in public, so I tend to do it at home, most often while reclining.

  What was the last truly great book you read?

  I’ve read a lot of books that I loved recently. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by a woman named Barbara Demick, was a real eye-opener. In terms of “great,” as in “This person seems to have reinvented the English language,” I’d say Wells Tower’s Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. What an exciting story collection it is, unlike anything I’ve ever come across.

  Do you consider yourself a fiction or a nonfiction person? What’s your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

  I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives. The worse off
the subjects, the more inclined I am to read about them. When it comes to fictional characters, I’m much less picky. Happy, confused, bitter: if I like the writing I’ll take all comers. I guess my guilty pleasure would be listening to the British audio versions of the Harry Potter books. They’re read by the great Stephen Fry, and I play them over and over, like an eight-year-old.

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

  I remember being floored by the first Raymond Carver collection I read: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. His short, simple sentences and familiar-seeming characters made writing look, if not exactly easy, then at least possible. That book got me to work harder, but more important it opened the door to other contemporary short story writers like Tobias Wolff and Alice Munro.

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

  I would want him to read Is There No Place on Earth for Me?, Susan Sheehan’s great nonfiction book about a young schizophrenic woman. It really conveys the grinding wheel of mental illness.

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

  I sometimes read books on my iPad. It’s great for traveling, but paper versions are easier to mark up, and I like the feeling of accomplishment I get when measuring the number of pages I’ve just finished—“Three-quarters of an inch!” I like listening to books as well, as that way you can iron at the same time. Notewise, whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

  What is your ideal reading experience? Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?

  Yes, all the above.

  What were your favorite books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from one of those books? Is there one book you wish all children would read?

  There was a series of biographies with orange covers in my elementary school library, and I must have read every one of them. Most of the subjects were presidents or founding fathers, but there were a few heroes thrown in as well: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett. I loved reading about their early years, back when they were chopping firewood and doing their homework by candlelight, never suspecting that one day they would be famous. I wish all children would read Is There No Place on Earth for Me? That way they’d have something to talk about when they meet the president.