By the Book (14 page)

Which of your own books is your favorite?

No more than we have favorite siblings, friends, or relatives, or will admit to having favorites, does a writer single out his or her “favorite” book. But I can say that the novel that exhausted me the most, wrung my emotions the most, and left me determined never again to write a thousand-page novel with a sympathetic protagonist who must die on the last page is
Blonde
, imagined as a tragic-epic of the life of Norma Jeane Baker/“Marilyn Monroe.”

Do you have a least favorite? Or one you regret having written?

The novel of mine that everyone has hated, or had hated (since it has been out of print virtually since its publication), is
The Assassins
(1975), which I have not looked at since perhaps 1976. I would never dare reread it—I could accept that it is not a good novel, but I would be very upset to discover that it wasn't, or anyway, wasn't “nearly so bad” as everyone said. That would hurt.

What's the one book you wish someone else would write?

A work of such brilliant prose, such imaginative powers, such sweep, such flair, with such an irresistible story and riveting characters that simply by reading it attentively one could understand those discoveries of molecular biology, neuroscience, psycholinguistics, “philosophy of mind,” and “string theory” in the way that their discoverers/creators understand them.

What do you plan to read next?

My in-box, containing sixteen very promising e-mails, most from writer-friends, that have come in since this interview began.

Joyce Carol Oates
is the author of more than forty novels, including
We Were the Mulvaneys
,
Blonde
, and
The Accursed
.

 

Library of the Underrated

Every writer I'm reading and loving seems underappreciated to me—then you mention the name and people say either, “Everyone reads them!” (Charles Portis, Dawn Powell) or, “You're being willfully obscure!” (Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Anna Kavan). That said, this is a major sport for me—I bore my friends with this all the time—so let's go: Laurie Colwin. Iain Sinclair. James Tiptree Jr., Stanley Elkin, and Stanley Ellin. And … But I'll stop.

—
Jonathan Lethem

At the top would have to be Paul Monette, author of
Becoming a Man
. He was a superbly gifted writer who died during the AIDS epidemic that deprived us of a generation of talent. I've often thought to myself, if they took the graphic sex scenes out of that book, it could be required reading in public schools. But maybe I'm dreaming.

—
James McBride

I don't know if he's unheralded, but there's a writer named J. Malcolm Garcia who continually astounds me with his energy and empathy. He writes powerful and lyrical nonfiction from Afghanistan, from Buenos Aires, from Mississippi, all of it urgent and provocative. I've been following him wherever he goes.

—
Dave Eggers

For years, I have been heralding the work of Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese-American writer. His prose is gorgeous, his approach irreverent, and the ideas in his stories are sometimes comical or fantastical, but always deadly serious—very relevant to understanding the complex history behind multiple holy wars today. In Italy and Spain, his books are best sellers. In the United States, he's hardly known. Why is there a geographic divide in literary appreciation?

—
Amy Tan

I don't know about egregious, but there's a book I loved called
When the Shooting Stops … the Cutting Begins
, by Ralph Rosenblum, that any fan of the early Woody Allen would like, and that nobody seems to know about.

—
Ira Glass

Let's assume that I've overlooked most of the good ones myself, but I'm a fan of
Mrs. Bridge
and
Mr. Bridge
, by the late Evan S. Connell. It was Connell, and also Jerzy Kosinski (
Steps
,
The Painted Bird
) who first made me aware of the power of short, very concise and witty chapters.

—
James Patterson

Geoffrey Wolff! I asked Vintage to put
A Day at the Beach
back in print so I could take it with me on book tour in November. I'm a big fan of all of Wolff's work, but this is the best book of essays I know.

—
Ann Patchett

I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence. Her race politics (outlined in her memoir,
Dust Tracks on a Road
) are a bit over my head, a bit strange, but fascinating.

—
Rachel Kushner

All writers are underrated.They're all trying to do their best. It's hard to finish a book. But Denton Welch deserves more of a fuss. Also John McNulty and that Long-Winded Lady, Maeve Brennan. Shakespeare is probably the most overrated writer of all time, although I must say his sonnets are incredible.

—
Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker

What book is on your night stand now?

The floor next to the bed is my true night stand. On it is a heap of books—things like John Masters's
Bhowani Junction
, Joan Aiken's
Nightbirds on Nantucket
, Grace Paley's
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
, Harold Robbins's
The Carpetbaggers
, and Lederer and Burdick's
The Ugly American
. Some books have been there a very long time. I reach down without looking and grab something and read a little of it, and then I put it back in the heap.

Last night my hand landed on John Toland's
Infamy
, about Pearl Harbor, and I read fifty pages—it's tremendous in a certain way. All books are incomplete. In my briefcase, which is perhaps my true, true night stand, I've been carrying around the galleys of Katie Roiphe's
In Praise of Messy Lives
. Roiphe's willing to say risky things, and she has a prosey astringency that makes me happy.

What was the last truly great book you read?

Recently I listened to Graham Greene's
The Human Factor
, read by Tim Pigott-Smith. It's a little repetitive here and there, especially at the beginning, but honestly, it's an extraordinary, careful novel that works up to something true and sad and worth spending time with. I also liked Greene's autobiography,
A Sort of Life
.

What's your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I keep thinking I'll enjoy suspense novels, and sometimes I do. I've read about twenty Dick Francis novels. I also sometimes like reading romance novels by people like Sylvia Day—not ones about vampires or werewolves or shape-shifters. When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays. I go back to the poetry collections I read in my twenties—Stanley Kunitz's
Collected Poems
, Howard Moss's
Selected Poems
. Also I love reading diaries. Recently I've been reading diaries by May Sarton and Thomas Merton.

What was the last book that made you cry?

I cried reading Mary Berg's diary of hunger in the ghetto in Warsaw. More recently and trivially, I cried when I read through my own book of essays and realized: thank God, it's done.

The last book that made you laugh?

Well, I've got Mark Twain's
Innocents Abroad
on Eucalyptus, a nice simple app for the iPhone. The animated page-turns are better than the page-turns in iBooks! Twain's a genius, no question. Read his “War Prayer,” too. It isn't funny—it'll make you mad.

Which novels contain the best sex?

Sometimes I think there are no good sex novels. When you're not in the mood, there's nothing worse than a sex scene. Words fail. Although I have liked listening to
Fanny Hill
. You can hear a marvelous free audio rendition of
Fanny Hill
on LibriVox.org. All the different readers, male and female, with their different accents, enhance the experience.

What's the best book about Maine?

E. B. White's essays are the best things I've read about Maine—especially the one in which he's not sure if he can go out sailing anymore in his sloop.

Which writers are egregiously overlooked or underrated?

All writers are underrated. They're all trying to do their best. It's hard to finish a book. But Denton Welch deserves more of a fuss. Also John McNulty and that Long-Winded Lady, Maeve Brennan. Shakespeare is probably the most overrated writer of all time, although I must say his sonnets are incredible.

Do you have a favorite character or hero from children's literature?

Tintin is my favorite children's book hero, or maybe it's Captain Haddock. Tintin was willing to walk around on the bottom of the sea, trusting the two detectives to crank his air pump. Nobody can draw Tibetan mountainsides like Hergé. In the morning, in bed, I sometimes raise my fist and cry, “Action Stations!”—as Haddock did when he was startled awake from a doze.

What's your favorite library in the world? Your favorite bookstore?

I suppose my favorite library is the one I use the most—the Dimond Library of the University of New Hampshire. It's quiet, full of blond wood, full of neatly shelved books, and in the summer very few people are there in the reading room. I find a table near an electrical outlet and sit and listen to the HVAC system blow through the building—keeping all those books cool, waiting for readers who will want them.

I'm also partial to the rare books and special collections division of Duke University's library system, because they were willing to take many tons of rich and rare bound newspapers that my wife and I happened to be in a position to watch over for a while.

My favorite bookstore is RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth. A woman there, a poet, once suggested that I read Mary Oliver's collected poems. RiverRun is not as intimidating as a Barnes & Noble, where there are so many books that you think: No more! Stop the presses!

What's the one book you wish someone else would write?

I'd like somebody to write a book that really told the truth about life now. Leo Tolstoy but with drive-through windows.

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?

Claude Debussy was distant and brilliant, a compulsive smoker, a letter-writing genius. I'd like to know what his voice sounded like.

And among authors you've met already, who most impressed you?

I'm impressed by all of them. They seem to be able to work hard and finish big shiny books and keep going and complain about their hotels and give bouncy interviews and readings and do all the things you're expected to do.

We're in the middle of a presidential administration in which one man in an office with velvet couches goes down a kill list. Our president has become an assassin. This sickens me and makes me want to stop writing altogether.

Who inspired you to write?

In fourth grade, I read Robert Sheckley's
Shards of Space
. I loved the title, and Sheckley made me want to write short stories about far-off vacuum-packed futures.

In seventh grade, my English teacher told me to read a poetry collection called
Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle
. There's a poem in there about a burro sent by express that ends, “Say who you are and where you're going.” There's also a bit by Robert Francis that goes, “Or tell me clouds / Are doing something to the moon / They never did before.” That poem really got to me.

What do you plan to read next?

Why bother to plan? I'll probably reach down tomorrow morning and haul up some old paperback from the floor.

Nicholson Baker
is the author of novels including
The Anthologist
,
Vox
, and
The Fermata
, and works of nonfiction including
Human Smoke
and
Double Fold
.

Emma Thompson