By the Book

by Pamela Paul

  What were your favorite books as a child? Did you have a favorite character or hero?

  I have always loved animals, and as a child, I read a lot of horse books. I had a particular favorite called Silver Snaffles that my mother gave away. I looked for a copy for decades and won’t soon forget the excitement I felt when I saw its familiar blue cover across the room in a bookcase of children’s literature in G. Heywood Hill’s legendary rare-book store in London just a few years ago. Now it is mine once again.

  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?

  Emily Dickinson. She is such a puzzle. Her startling genius seems to have come from nowhere. She lived her life as a recluse; her work remained essentially unpublished and undiscovered until well after her death. Yet she turned language and poetry on end.

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

  I often read nonfiction with a pencil in hand. I love the feel, the smell, the design, the weight of a book, but I also enjoy the convenience of my Kindle—for travel and for procuring a book in seconds.

  What is the best book you’ve read about academia? Or a book that prepared you for academic life in some way?

  Amanda Cross’s murderous take on academic life has provided me with a great deal of pleasure.

  In a more serious vein, I much admire Clark Kerr’s The Uses of the University, which was originally delivered as a series of lectures at Harvard in 1963 and has been amplified in several editions since. It remains the best explanation of how the American research university emerged and evolved, and why its commitment to the critical perspective and the long view is so important to our present and future.

  Is there any book you wish all incoming freshmen at Harvard would read?

  Kathryn Schulz’s Being Wrong advocates doubt as a skill and praises error as the foundation of wisdom. Her book would reinforce my encouragement of Harvard’s accomplished and successful freshmen to embrace risk and even failure.

  What do you plan to read next?

  After I finish the pile on my night stand, I may take up Karl Marlantes’s What It Is Like to Go to War. My curiosity about that question has animated a great deal of my own research and writing about the Civil War. Ernest Hemingway once declared that war “is the best subject.” It is certainly one that has engaged me as both author and reader.

  Drew Gilpin Faust is the president of Harvard University and the author of Mothers of Invention, among other books.

  * * *

  Guilty Pleasures

  My guiltiest pleasure is Harry Stephen Keeler. He may have been the greatest bad writer America has ever produced. Or perhaps the worst great writer. I do not know. There are few faults you can accuse him of that he is not guilty of. But I love him.

  —Neil Gaiman

  Books about the Inquisition and the Crusades are a guilty pleasure because I feel guilty reading bad things about the Catholic Church—though it’s hard to avoid these days. Biographies of famous horses and lives of the saints are among my favorite literary genres.

  —Caroline Kennedy

  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.

  —David Sedaris

  Spiritually leaning self-help is obviously my guilty pleasure (not that guilty: I like Ram Dass, Deepak Chopra, and especially Mark Epstein’s Buddhist psychology books). I also like extremely speculative books in which psychics explain what happens before we’re born/after we die (Sylvia Browne, master psychic).

  —Lena Dunham

  My (very) guilty pleasure is tabloid journalism. I hate to say it, but I know the names of all the celebrities’ babies.

  —Elizabeth Gilbert

  I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, I only believe in pleasures. People who call reading detective fiction or eating dessert a guilty pleasure make me want to puke. Pedophilia is a pleasure a person should have guilt about. Not chocolate.

  —Ira Glass

  I’m the guy in the waiting room flipping through People. Bellow said that fiction was “the higher autobiography,” but really it’s the higher gossip.

  —Jeffrey Eugenides

  My guilty pleasures are the usual—crime and suspense. But my literary conscience doesn’t bother me about Ruth Rendell, P. D. James, Elmore Leonard, and Alan Furst.

  —P. J. O’Rourke

  When I was a teenager my guilty reading was, of course, erotic stuff. At fourteen, living in Lebanon, I discovered the irresistible mixture of eroticism and fantasy reading One Thousand and One Nights inside a closet with a flashlight. Nothing can be compared to the excitement of a forbidden book. Today nothing is forbidden to me, so there is no guilt. Too bad!

  —Isabel Allende

  My guiltiest secret is that every Thursday, I buy People magazine, Us Weekly, and the National Enquirer. If anyone asks about this, I will lie and maintain that I just said it to be funny. If people call when I am reading the Enquirer, I say, “Oh, lah de dah, I’m just lying here reading the new New Yorker.”

  —Anne Lamott

  My guilty pleasure is tough-guy-loner action novels, like the Jack Reacher series, where the protagonist is an outwardly rugged but inwardly sensitive and thoughtful guy who, through no fault of his own, keeps having to beat the crap out of people.

  —Dave Barry

  * * *

  Carl Hiaasen

  What book is on your night stand now?

  Raylan, by Elmore Leonard, one of my writing heroes. There is nobody better at lowlife dialogue. And also, by the way, not a cooler guy on the planet.

  When and where do you like to read?

  Unfortunately, I don’t get to read nearly as much as I want because I’m always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns. So I do most of my reading when I travel, on airplanes, at least until the meds kick in.

  What was the last truly great book you read? Do you remember the last time you said to someone, “You absolutely must read this book”?

  I had that reaction to Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell. It just blew me away. Everybody’s idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it’s one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original. I just reread The Sporting Club, by Tom McGuane, and it might be one of the funniest American novels ever. Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe, is still dazzling.

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

  When I’m working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else. I’m probably biased toward contemporary fiction and satire because that’s what I enjoy most, which is natural when you’re coming from a journalism background. Vampires, wizards, dragon slayers—pretty tame stuff when you live in a place like Florida.

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

  I remember being greatly affected by several books—Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, and Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, for starters. Without Feathers, a collection of Woody Allen’s early short stories, was a prized possession. But long before that, what really made me want to be a writer was the Hardy Boys series, and also daily newspapers. My mom says I learned to read on the sports pages of the Miami Herald.

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

  The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey. It would definitely transport Obama out of the Beltway.

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

  I don’t have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage. Oddly, at recent book signings I’ve had readers ask me to autograph their Kindles or iPads. I even signed a few Nooks, I swear to God
.

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

  I don’t want to read any book that makes me cry. I get all the gloom I can stand from newspaper headlines. Novels should be a sweeping distraction—entertainment, to put it simply, and there’s no law against getting educated while you’re getting entertained. For authors, the best books to read are the humbling ones. You should put it down when you’re finished, thinking: “Geez, I’ll never be able to write like that. Maybe I should try ceramics.”

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

  In seventh grade, for some perverse reason, I decided to read the entire World Book Encyclopedia. I got about fifty pages into the first volume before moss started growing on my eyelids.

  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 would have loved to have gone deep-sea fishing with Hemingway, as long as he didn’t bring the Thompson submachine. He liked to shoot his initials into the heads of sharks. Seriously.

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

  Novels are like your children—you’ve got deep affection for all of them, but there’s always something you wished you’d done a bit differently, or better. Tourist Season is dear to me because it was my first solo try, and then Hoot, because it was my first book for young readers. In both cases I assumed the thing would bomb.

  I suppose my favorite character is Skink, a totally unhinged, roadkill-eating ex-governor. He shows up in several novels, usually written during election years when I’m feeling especially torqued.

  If somebody walked in on you writing one of your books, what would she see? What does your work space look like?

  The first thing you see outside my office is a doormat that says: LEAVE. My wife got it for me, and it works pretty well. Inside, my so-called work space looks like it got tossed by burglars. Meanwhile, my prolific friend Mike Lupica has an office corkboard covered with colored index cards upon which he’s meticulously plotted whatever novel he’s writing. It’s very disturbing.

  Do you remember the last book someone personally recommended you read and that you enjoyed? Who recommended you read it and what persuaded you to pick it up?

  My oldest son, Scott, recently sent me a novel about a pair of hired gunslingers called The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick deWitt. It was just terrific.

  What was the last book you gave to someone as a gift? And to whom?

  Last month I sent a wonderful British memoir called Blood Knots to Peter Solomon, a friend of mine who loves fishing like I do. (Technically it wasn’t a gift—a friend sent it to me and I passed it along.)

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

  I’m waiting for the day when Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist writes a book.

  What do you plan to read next?

  The next thing I plan to read, for at least the hundredth time, is chapter nineteen of the novel I’ve been working on. Either that or volume two of the encyclopedia.

  Carl Hiaasen is the author of numerous books for adults and children, including Bad Monkey, Star Island, Nature Girl, Skinny Dip, Sick Puppy, and Lucky You.

  * * *

  What the President Should Read

  The Constitution, with emphasis on the First Amendment.

  —Mary Higgins Clark

  The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam. Theories and grand ideas are important. But they seldom unfold as planned. People—it is all about people.

  —Colin Powell

  The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam. Smart people make bad decisions about policy and then compound them by refusing to admit they were wrong. I wish George W. Bush had read it before invading Iraq.

  —Anna Quindlen

  The president—any president—could usefully acquaint him/herself with Walt Kelly’s cartoon strip of Pogo Possum living in the swamps of Georgia. Very perspicacious about politics. The prime minister might revisit Geoffrey Willans’s Molesworth, which is so illuminating about the character and habits of little boys. I am not being rude. Both president and prime minister have to deal with a great quantity of childish behavior.

  —Emma Thompson

  The president’s already read Team of Rivals, and I can’t think of anything better for him. I’d give our prime minister Justice, by Michael Sandel.

  —J. K. Rowling

  Fifty Shades of Grey. Why should he miss all the fun? Plus, it might loosen him up a bit.

  —John Grisham

  The Road to Serfdom, no matter who is president. But a president is a busy man, and Hayek’s syntax is heavy going. Being a native German speaker, Hayek strings together railroad sentences ending in train wreck verbs.

  —P. J. O’Rourke

  Your president is a complex case, a man of passion, courage, and oratory. And also, a diligent, prickly, practical law professor. I’d particularly keep him close to Whitman and Thoreau, those great American voices of openhearted humanity, daring, and liberty.

  —Alain de Botton

  The Brothers Karamazov, by Dostoyevsky. I was required to read this book in English class during my freshman year at Haverford College, but I never finished it. I seriously doubt that Dostoyevsky ever finished it. So I figure if the president read it, he could tell me what happens.

  —Dave Barry

  I’m convinced that anyone who takes that job doesn’t need advice from me on anything. It would only make their life worse. But if I had to force him to read something, it would be My Way of Life, a pocket-reader version (edited by Walter Farrell) of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas. God’s wisdom comes in handy when you’re the leader of the free world. I got that as a gift from the late Lt. Gen. William J. McCaffrey. His son, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, was a leader of American forces in the Persian Gulf war. The father, Gen. William McCaffrey, was a commander in the all-black 92nd Division in Italy. He understood what it meant to send men into harm’s way.

  —James McBride

  * * *

  John Irving

  What book is on your night stand now?

  I don’t read in bed, ever. As for the main character of my novel In One Person, Billy Abbott is a bisexual man; Billy would prefer having sex with a man or a woman to reading in bed.

  Where, when, and how do you like to read? Paper or electronic?

  I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. I don’t read anything electronically. I don’t write electronically, either—except e-mails to my family and friends. I write in longhand. I have always written first drafts by hand, but I used to write subsequent drafts and insert pages on a typewriter. Now (for the last two books) I write all my drafts by hand. It’s the right speed for me—slow.

  What was the last truly great book you read?

  When I love a novel I’ve read, I want to reread it—in part, to see how it was constructed. The two novels I’ve reread this year are Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table and Edmund White’s Jack Holmes and His Friend—a seamless use of time (most notably, the flash-forwards within the memory of the past) in the former, and a clarifying delineation of different sexual points of view in the latter. They are two terrific novels.

  What’s your favorite literary genre?

  I hate the certainty with which literary works are categorized into one or another “genre”; this tempts me to say that my “favorite” genre is something not easily categorized—such as same-sex foreplay in gardens, with dogs watching at a distance.

  What book changed your life?

  Great Expectations.

  How old were you when you read it? And what changed?

  I was fifteen. It made me want to be able to write a novel li
ke that. It was very visual—I saw everything, exactly—and the characters were more vivid than any I had heretofore met on the page. I had only met characters like that onstage, and not just in any play—mainly in Shakespeare. Fully rendered characters, but also mysterious. I loved the secrets in Dickens—the contrasting foreshadowing, but not of everything. You both saw what was coming and you didn’t. Hardy had that effect on me, too, but when I was older. And Melville, but also when I was older.

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

  I’m sure the president has read James Baldwin, but he may have missed Giovanni’s Room—a short novel of immeasurable sadness. That is the novel he should read—or reread, as the case may be—because it will strengthen his resolve to do everything in his power for gay rights, and to assert that gay rights are a civil rights issue. The gay-bashing among the Republican presidential contenders may be born of a backlash against gay marriage; whatever it comes from, it’s reprehensible.

  What were your favorite books as a child?

  My Father’s Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett.

  Were you an early reader or did you come to it late? A fast or slow reader? Did you grow up around books?

  I am a slow reader; when I’m tired, I move my lips. I almost read out loud. My grandmother read to me, and my mother—and my father. My father was the best reader; he has a great voice, a teacher’s voice. Yes, I grew up around books—my grandmother’s house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around.

  You’ve often taught writing. What book do you find most useful to help teach aspiring writers?

  There is no one book that students of writing “should” read. With young writers, I tried to focus on the choices you make before you write a novel. The main character and the most important character are not always the same person—you have to know the difference. The first-person voice and the third-person voice each come with advantages and disadvantages; it helps me to know what the story is, and who the characters are, before I choose the point-of-view voice for the storytelling. Two novels I taught a lot were Cat and Mouse (Grass) and The Power and the Glory or The Heart of the Matter (Greene). They were excellent examples of novels about moral dilemmas; I find that young writers are especially interested in moral dilemmas—they’re often struggling to write about those dilemmas.