By the Book

by Pamela Paul

  What kinds of stories are you drawn to?

  Anything that involves David and Goliath.

  Any you steer clear of?

  Corny, unbelievable novels; political books; stories by super-duper mountain-climber types who spend thousands snowboarding or traversing high peaks and writing books about it while they could be digging water wells in Peru someplace, helping somebody. I usually just go to the part of those books where the guy dies. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Probably not. I avoid pulp fiction. I dig spy novels. I read more history books than anything else. Leon Litwack’s books on slavery are favorites, especially Been in the Storm So Long. I read a bit of Nietzsche when I travel. I’d like to see a book that tells us who those people are on bikes who wear those funny little uniforms and ride all over the road.

  Which book has had the greatest impact on you?

  Probably the Bible, because it was hammered over my head so much.

  What book made you want to write?

  Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House.

  In what ways does your music-playing influence or inform your writing?

  Only in a structural sense. I’m not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth. A clean office, devoid of funk, without open books and dirty coffee cups and papers strewn around, would drive me bananas. If anything, I prefer traffic and sirens. But in a structural sense, jazz demands that you negotiate the road ahead with certain restrictions—tempo, harmony, chords, and so on—and that’s a good template for the working writer. You can’t write just anything. Your story needs structure. Jazz sets out a kind of road map that you’re supposed to follow, but there are limits. If you’re playing a solo in the key of B flat and play, say, an F sharp or B natural, you better have a good reason for it—or be Charlie Parker. You can make it work, of course, but remember this: Even though you’re driving the car, you may not know the exact route home. You’ll get there somehow. If you trust the music, and stay within the parameters, within that framework, you’ll get home. Same with writing. That’s why I say writing is an act of faith. But my way may not be the best way.

  What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

  That’s tough, because I just moved and most of my books are in boxes. It took three guys several hours to move those books. I peeked inside one box, and here’s what I found: Encyclopedia of Disability, entire volumes. The Polish Jewry: History and Culture (published by Interpress, various authors); part of the Marvel Comics Civil War series; and the first three volumes of the new black Spider-Man in hardback, and I’m waiting for the fourth to come out. A couple of hillbilly joke books in there too.

  Do you ever read self-help? Anything you recommend?

  My self-help books are generally restricted to cars. I started with John Muir’s How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and now have the service manuals to most of the cars I’ve owned: 240 Volvo, Honda, Ford, etc. Jane Bryant Quinn’s Making the Most of Your Money works for me, though she’s not fond of cars. Several books on jazz arranging and technique, most notably Oliver Nelson’s Patterns for Improvisation.

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

  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. I admired him greatly.

  Did you identify with any literary characters growing up?

  Not really. My mother was more interesting and mysterious than any literary character I’d ever come across.

  Who were your literary heroes?

  Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye) got me out of bed, Richard Wright (Black Boy) got me to school on the bus, but Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird) helped me sleep at night.

  Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t?

  I’m not good enough to say anybody is overrated. But I’ll say this: When pop singers and Hollywood stars write children’s books, it usually means there’s a lot of good trees dying for nothing.

  Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

  I put down A Year of Days, by Episcopal Bishop Edmond Lee Browning, every night without finishing it. I’ve been reading one page a day for three years. You’re supposed to read only one page at a time. As for lousy books, there are plenty. But I’d rather see kids reading lousy books than obeying the television like drones.

  If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be?

  I already met my hero: Kurt Vonnegut. I wanted to know if he liked Louis Armstrong better than Richard Wagner. I can’t remember the answer. He poured me a drink, and we sat up listening to music. I left his house walking on air, soused, having drunk his liquor and smoked his filterless cigarettes. I asked him why he smoked filterless cigarettes, which are stronger and worse for you. He said, “More value.”

  If you could be any character from literature who would you be?

  Spider-Man. If that doesn’t count, George Smiley, from John le Carré’s early work. Smiley understands. Smiley takes it across the face. Smiley’s got a job to do. Smiley’s got a broken heart. Smiley can take it.

  What book have you always meant to read and haven’t gotten around to yet?

  Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

  Anything you feel embarrassed never to have read?

  I’ve never read the great Russian writers. Fact is, I just don’t have any great interest in Russia or Russian culture or Russian history. None at all. Who knows why. I suppose we’re all allowed to be dumb here once or twice.

  What do you plan to read next?

  John le Carré’s A Delicate Truth.

  James McBride is the author of The Good Lord Bird, The Color of Water, Song Yet Sung, and Miracle at St. Anna.

  James Patterson

  What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year?

  I spent several eventful and exhilarating summers at a mental hospital outside Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was working my way through school there—honest. But I do love crazy people. Crazy authors especially: William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Ken Kesey, Sylvia Plath, Cormac McCarthy. Maybe that’s why Where’d You Go, Bernadette is my favorite novel so far this year. It’s funnier than a season’s worth of Modern Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Justified episodes; it’s also the most original and imaginative fiction I’ve read since The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

  If you had to name a favorite novelist, who would it be?

  I’m much more comfortable writing about “favorite” books than I am proclaiming “the best” of anything. I’m afraid I have to talk “favorites”—plural—though. Gabriel García Márquez, James Joyce, and Günter Grass are important to me because their writing made it crystal clear that I wasn’t capable of the write stuff. Those three dream-killers are still among my favorites. So is George Pelecanos in the thriller-mystery game. Also Richard Price, who seems to remember every good line and phrase he ever heard. This was even true in his first novel, The Wanderers, which made me sick with envy way back when I was young, carefree, and more susceptible to jealousy.

  Who do you consider the best thriller writers of all time?

  There’s that gnatty “best” word again. Soldiering on, I love Pelecanos. Also Nelson DeMille, Michael Connelly, James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane, Walter Mosley, Don Winslow, and Richard Price, of course. As one-offs, Night Dogs, The
Ice Harvest, Marathon Man, Different Seasons, and Cutter and Bone are among my “besties.” I believe that thrillers should thrill—and most don’t, at least not for me. I also don’t think that thriller writers need to play by the constricting rules of realism. Sometimes I come across reviews carping that a certain thriller isn’t very “realistic” or that such and such a scene “would never happen in real life.” Makes me think of an art critic accusing Klee or Chagall of not being very realistic.

  Who is your favorite overlooked or underappreciated writer?

  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. (At least I got the short part right.) Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes is another overlooked beaut. Also Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose Novels. And George Saunders’s CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. A troubling sidebar is that for every George Saunders found, there are a dozen others, not just overlooked, but undiscovered.

  What kinds of stories are you drawn to? Any you steer clear of?

  I avoid the same kinds of books that I do people—long-winded, sanctimonious, goody-two-shoes, self-important, mean-spirited. Well, maybe not mean-spirited when it comes to books.

  What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

  I’m not entirely sure who “we” is. Some people would be surprised, I guess, to find Train Dreams; Caravaggio; Swerve; What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank; Poems: 1962–2012, by Louise Glück, on my bookshelves. Others might be surprised that I enjoy so-called chick lit. And kids’ books by the baker’s dozen. I was surprised to find 11/22/63 in my stacks. Aren’t I supposed to be mad at Stephen King?

  Do you ever read self-help? Anything you recommend?

  I’m a believer in literal self-help rather than help by others. I try to avoid self-appointed experts for hire.

  Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite?

  Ah, which of my babies? Well, my current passion is the books I write to get more kids reading (that’s your kids and grandkids, dear reader)—the Middle School series, I Funny, Maximum Ride, Treasure Hunters. I’m proud to have created Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, the Private series. Jeez, enough with the self-serving lists.

  Of the films based on your books, which is your favorite? What made it so good?

  Sadly, I feel my books have been better than the movies made from them. I’m a total movieholic, so that state of affairs is more depressing to me than it ought to be. My current paranoid theory is that I’m a victim of “caricature assassination” in certain Hollywood quarters—“Oh, that airport author has another best-selling page-turner.” True story: When Along Came a Spider was in galleys, I got a large offer from a studio. All I had to do was change Alex Cross into a white man.

  Describe the best letter you’ve ever received from a reader.

  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.

  What book has had the greatest impact on you personally? Professionally?

  Tristram Shandy shivered my timbers as a grad student, and woke me out of my zombie state about the glorious possibilities for breaking the rules whenever I damn well felt like it. Mix first person and third person? Sure, if it helps the story. Sentence fragments? Hell, yes.

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

  It seems to me that Barack Obama is sufficiently well read. The president might consider E. M. Forster’s Two Cheers for Democracy or even Tina Fey’s Bossypants, which would have helped him surround himself with people who don’t think they know everything about everything: being poor, being wealthy, getting sick, getting old, fighting a war. If it matters to anybody, I voted for Mr. Obama.

  Did you grow up with a lot of books? What are your memories of being read to as a child?

  It’s all getting a little dim back at the far end of the tunnel—but I recall that my mother and father read a lot, mostly best sellers. But the better ones—Gore Vidal, Herman Wouk. I don’t remember being read to as a kid, or actually being a child at all. Some friends suggest that I never was a child.

  Do you have a favorite childhood literary character or hero?

  Peter Pan. I loved Peter Pan. Still love Peter Pan. Peter Pan is the only ride that I enjoyed at Disney. And I’m pretty sure that I wrote the Maximum Ride books for kids—starting with my own beloved Jack—because of my affection as a child for Peter Pan.

  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?

  I put down at least a book or two a week. I also walk out on scads of movies, and even Broadway plays. I believe it’s the sane thing to do. I’m not a big Gatsby fan, and unfortunately I never got into Don Quixote, even though I thought I would love the book.

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

  I’m fascinated by the idea of James Joyce, but I doubt we would have much to talk about. I’d like to have a lunch with Bill Clinton. Maybe a drink with Hunter Thompson. Just one—or two. Dinner with Angelina Jolie would be nice. Does she write?

  If you could meet any character from literature, who would it be?

  Jesus. Somewhere in his late twenties or very early thirties. Pre-Crucifixion. I would advise against the experience on the cross. I would suggest he talk to his Father about it. Lay out his own well-reasoned point of view. Maybe mention that I was negative about crucifixions as object lessons.

  James Patterson is the author of many books, including the Alex Cross novels, which include Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider; the Women’s Murder Club novels; and the Michael Bennett series.

  Jonathan Lethem

  What are you reading at the moment? Are you a one-book-at-a-time person?

  I’m all over the place right now, happily. In my office I tend to be racing through short books—Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary and Edward St. Aubyn’s Melrose books and Lydia Millet’s Magnificence just now, while at the bedside table and on trains and airplanes I’m grinding away at monsters over a period of months, if not years: Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle. I’ve been trending to these galactic structures lately—last summer I had my head broken open by Doris Lessing’s Four-Gated City and so now appear doomed to read the Martha Quest novels—backwards. I also recently noticed how many unfinished novels have been important to me: Musil’s, Kafka’s, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, Christina Stead’s I’m Dying Laughing. Reading around in Ellison’s Three Days Before the Shooting…; I bet I’d like that thing in Salinger’s safe.

  What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year?

  I just devoured in succession two spanking-new studies of great artists, both terrific reading experiences, brain-expanding but embracing, too: Claudia Roth Pierpont’s Roth Unbound and T. J. Clark’s Picasso and Truth. Both hit their very tricky targets. They’ll be with me for a good long time.

  If you had to name a favorite novelist, who would it be?

  I hate this question. My favorite letter is D, which gives me Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Dick, Delany, and DeLillo. Unless it’s S, which gives me Stead, Spark, Salter, Saramago, and others. I could go to a desert island with D or S, I think.

  Care to call out your nominees for most overlooked or underappreciated writer?

  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 w
illfully 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. I’d also champion the familiar-but-taken-for-granted: the greatness of Shirley Jackson, Elizabeth Bowen, Brian Moore, Thomas Berger. The stories of Bruce Jay Friedman.

  What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

  I notice other people are surprised to see so much of a certain kind of postwar British novelist: Anita Brookner, Penelope Fitzgerald, L. P. Hartley et al. They’re not surprising to me. I think people who haven’t read them imagine they’re cozy books, but they’re not—despite their relatively traditional form, they’re often unsettling.

  Do you ever read self-help? Anything you recommend?

  As a kid I used to compulsively reread Alan Watts’s Wisdom of Insecurity. I didn’t think of that as self-help at the time, but I think of it that way now. It’s still the help I need.

  What are your favorite Brooklyn stories? And now that you’re at Pomona College, your favorite books about California?

  Two merciless little novels—Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters and L. J. Davis’s A Meaningful Life—bring to life the South Brooklyn I knew as a child in the early ’70s. Apart from that, however, I don’t much seek out books about Brooklyn; I’m more turned on by what Brooklyn grain I detect (or imagine I detect) in the voices of certain Brooklyn-born writers who leave the place largely unexplored as a subject: Robert Stone, Gilbert Sorrentino, Maurice Sendak.

  As for California, I read Raymond Chandler long before I’d been here. I breathed in the atmosphere of those books before I even understood Chandler was writing about real places rather than conjuring a zone where his stories could be enacted. Now that I’m here, I see his books—and Ross Macdonald’s—as making a deep stratological survey of the place, in the manner of John McPhee.