“I feel such connection to the human who made it, which delights and moves me,” says the novelist, whose new book is “Wayward.” “If you can write a joke that is still funny in 100 years, you are great.”
What books are on your night stand?
I have several stacks of books on my night stand: Melissa Febos’s “Girlhood,” Tove Ditlevsen’s “The Faces,” Elissa Washuta’s “White Magic,” Jonathan Lethem’s “The Arrest,” Dorothy Wickenden’s “The Agitators,” Upton Sinclair’s “Boston” (Vol. 1), William Patrick Patterson’s “Ladies of the Rope” and Christine Schutt’s “Nightwork.”
What’s the last great book you read?
I read so many great books in this pandemic year. Eimear McBride’s “A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing” devastated me. John Keene’s “Counternarratives,” brilliant. Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” and Zadie Smith’s “Intimations” are pandemic specific and beautiful. Katie Kitamura’s “Intimacies” stayed with me, unsettling, mysterious, as did Don DeLillo’s “The Silence.” Anthony Veasna So’s “Afterparties” is radically new and hilarious. Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsider,” so clarifying and potent. I wish I had read it years ago. Joshua Ferris’s “A Calling for Charlie Barnes” is terrific. Rachel Kushner’s “The Hard Crowd” and Jo Ann Beard’s “Festival Days” are both stunning collections. Saidiya Hartman’s “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments”: Its hybrid form is miraculous.
Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?
I read the Tolstoy short story “Master and Man” for the first time via George Saunders’s analysis in his great book, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.” That story throttled me — a breathtaking reading experience. And then Saunders shows you how Tolstoy did it, which is a gift, truly.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
I like to read in the tub, which is abusive to the physical state of a book. (I am not like Dalton Trumbo, though, writing in the bath. Not yet.) Otherwise, I like to read novels in the very early morning, under a bright light and with a sharp pencil in hand. No interruptions. I also love to read on planes because the need to avoid thinking about crashing focuses me. I can plow through a whole novel easily, gratefully, on a plane.
What do you read when you’re working on a book? And what do you avoid?
I like to immerse myself in the world of my novel. For “Wayward,” I found “The Stammering Century,” by Gilbert Seldes, instructive about upstate New York and the weird edges of the reform movements of the 19th century. I avoid fiction too closely tied to the content or themes of the book, but closeness in form can be helpful. This time I did return to Coetzee’s “Disgrace” because I found his strategy so instructive: The very flawed protagonist blows up his life in the first third, and then things continue to escalate.
What writers are especially good on women and midlife?
Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Hardwick, Tillie Olsen, Mary Ruefle, Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Strout. In Doris Lessing’s “The Summer Before the Dark,” the midlife woman is self-aware, political, sort of a counter to the tragically naïve title character in Evan S. Connell’s “Mrs. Bridge.” But I love the style of “Mrs. Bridge,” and the last scene trapped in the car works so well, I can’t deny it. I loved Darcey Steinke’s “Flash Count Diary” and Sigrid Nunez’s “The Friend.” Joan Didion writes so unsentimentally about the loss of control one feels in not being able to protect your children as they grow up, which is a big part of midlife, as does Yiyun Li. Edwidge Danticat’s “The Art of Death” is so good on the death of a parent, the other prominent challenge of midlife. I just finished “The Secret of Superhuman Strength,” by Alison Bechdel, which captures the humility and wisdom that comes from inhabiting an aging body with great wit. And Jenny Offill’s “Weather” for its intimate reckoning with the world around the midlife and your responsibility to it.
What’s your favorite book to assign to and discuss with your English students at Syracuse University?
With my M.F.A. students, I like to assign Joy Williams, any of her short stories. She is hard to teach, but when students read her closely, they always get better at writing. At least one student per class experiences that top-of-head-taken-off thing.
Do you think any canonical books are widely misunderstood?
“Ulysses” is famously difficult, and, in truth, there are tedious parts. And problematic parts. But if approached with irreverence, you can feel the living force of an extraordinary and particular mind at play. Take what you want, don’t be too precious. Its audacity grants a writer all kinds of permission. As Anne Enright said, Joyce “opened all the windows and doors.”
What moves you most in a work of literature?
When a book seems urgent, which happens if I have a sense of the writer trying to work something out, or to discover something, in the writing. And when something familiar is described with such precision that it becomes estranged, and I am able to see it with clarity and depth. The astonishing experience of recognition and implication in the same moment. Writing that resists easy reductions and clichés of language and thought. One of my favorite things is laughing at a joke in a really old book: I feel such connection to the human who made it, which delights and moves me. If you can write a joke that is still funny in 100 years, you are great.
Do you prefer books that reach you emotionally, or intellectually?
The older I get, the more complicated this question becomes. I need to feel the life and energy of the writer in the book. This can be a surprising turn in a sentence, a mysterious escalation in form, a particularity of voice. A character revising an idea about the world via a crucial moment of derangement. Even a bold failure. All of these register as emotional to me.
Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?
Honestly, I have very little patience for science fiction, but as my daughter says, “That is a you problem, Mama.”
How do you organize your books?
By size! I keep all the large-size books in the living room bookshelves, which is how my parents and aunts and uncles used to do it. While the adults talked, we children were encouraged to look at the art books. In my case, my living room books are mostly art books, but not only: everything from Whole Earth Catalogs to “The Book of Wonders,” a charmingly inaccurate encyclopedia from 1916, to the “New York Times Great Lives of the Century” (which is huge and contains obituaries of famous people reprinted as they appeared in the paper) to “Assassination!,” a picture book of Lego re-enactments of famous assassination attempts. I strive to be the weird aunt.
Besides the Lego one, what other books might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
I collect interior design and decorating books from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Better Homes and Gardens collections, kitchens with avocado green appliances, bright yellow laminate counter tops, plants in macramé.
What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
My English teacher Jim Hosney assigned part of “The Big Money,” by John Dos Passos, in 12th grade, and it changed forever my idea of what novels could be or do. That was a gift, one of many from that teacher.
What do you plan to read next?
Brooks Haxton’s “Mister Toebones,” Matthew Specktor’s “Always Crashing in the Same Car,” Mona Awad’s “All’s Well,” Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “The Committed,” Christine Smallwood’s “The Life of the Mind,” Christopher Sorrentino’s “Now Beacon, Now Sea,” Namwali Serpell’s “Stranger Faces,” Gina Nutt’s “Night Rooms” and “My Ántonia,” by Willa Cather.
"really" - Google News
July 01, 2021 at 04:00PM
https://ift.tt/3w3CPYI
Dana Spiotta Loves Coming Across Jokes in Really Old Books - The New York Times
"really" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3b3YJ3H
https://ift.tt/35qAk7d
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Dana Spiotta Loves Coming Across Jokes in Really Old Books - The New York Times"
Post a Comment