My Writers: Dave Eggers

When I started this series, I did so with a list of fifteen favorite writers I included in response to a Facebook meme. Since I decided to dutifully track through them, my first dozen-plus entries were predetermined. I’ve now gone through every one of those, which makes this outing feel oddly momentous. I can go anywhere I want, highlight anyone I want. In a way, this feel like more of a statement, especially since I’m now liberated from the one arbitrary rule I set for myself on that initial list posted to Facebook: fiction writers only. Not writers who toiled exclusively on fiction–I’m a admirer of Jonathan Lethem’s essays, for example–but those whose fiction accounted for the major part of their impact on me. I bring this rule up because it actually prevented me from including at least one personally significant writer on the list. So, in a way, choosing the first writer to celebrate outside of outside of that first list isn’t actually that hard. If I’d been willing to sidestep my guideline, I would have included Dave Eggers from the beginning.

Much as I value Eggers’s writing, his pure fiction is the least impactful to me. I offer that with the caveat that I haven’t yet read his latest effort, A Hologram for the King, widely lauded when it was released last year. Similarly, what I have read of his novelization of his screenplay adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (so complicated!) is surprisingly wonderful. On the other hand, his first novel, 2002′s You Shall Know Our Velocity, was markedly lackluster, something Eggers almost seemed to know as he blew up and reconstructed his whole approach to writing afterward. Lest it seem as though I’m engaging in disparagement entirely in opposition to the purpose of this series, this actually speaks to the allure Eggers has for me. Unlike perhaps any other writer I regularly read and follow, Eggers triumphs most boldly when he’s at his most unconventional, subtly, wisely tweaking and twisting the rules in favor of his style and interests.

And another process-related notation, because this author seems to call for such things. As noted previously, the image selected for each entry corresponds, as best as I can achieve, with the first book I read from the writer in question, or at least the book that tipped them over into my personal pantheon, that made them one of my writers. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, the 2000 elliptical memoir that made Eggers a sensation, was indeed the first book of his I’d read, but to have a more accurate representation of when the writer arrived on my radar, I’d be better off with a cover of Might magazine, the San Francisco-based periodical he started with a couple friends in the early nineteen-nineties. I’m not entirely sure how I heard about it in the first place–a Chicago Tribune article, maybe–but I bought the magazine obsessively, usually only getting my hands on it when I was able to go to Borders down in Madison. It was a remarkable mix of snark, irony and dead serious journalism, simultaneously embracing and deconstructing the mechanics of magazine writing in a manner that recalls David Letterman’s similar balancing act on Late Night, albeit with a little less irony. This was a magazine that could have a sharp, straightforward piece on a matter of grave geopolitical importance and title it “Throw Me the Idol, I Throw You the Whip, No Time to Argue.”

Similarly, I later haunted the magazine racks at the massive Madison Barnes & Noble, anxiously hoping to find new copies of Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, which Eggers developed after Might folded. Originally pitched–at least in the greater media–as a repository for articles by name writers that other periodicals had rejected, the publication rapidly took on a wildly unique life of its own, one that has only spawned more and greater experimentation over the years. I still harbor deep regrets over not investing in the lifetime subscription that was offered in early issues for only a couple hundred bucks, an offer that was later later withdrawn, initially temporarily, “while we do some math.” Besides the very good writing McSweeney’s contained, it also seemed (and seems) to be an expression of Eggers’s intellectual rambunctiousness, a love for the forms and possibilities of publishing, formatting itself as endlessly pliable as sentences and stories.

And that brings me back to A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius: dense, meandering, emotionally fraught and imbued with a boundless love of language. Tour de force cover it, but it also shortchanges the book. It is a life, a soul, a psyche laid bare, open to roughshod treatment. And many did meet the book with gruff responses, especially once it developed fervent fans, meaning it was time to engage the backlash. Its critics found the book to be indulgent. I thought it was thrilling and audacious, achieving a sort of anxious honesty by following thoughts through their loop-de-loop logic. It required attention, a commitment to its oblong rhythms. I don’t want every book to be so verbally cacophonous, but I’m damned glad this one is.

And I’m equally glad that Eggers doesn’t write that way all the time. Indeed, he actually writes that way rarely, even though he’ll never fully live the stylistic flourishes of Staggering Genius down, each new work stirring impressed remarks about the surprising leanness of the language. What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, a largely nonfiction account of a Lost Boy Sudanese refugee presented as a novel, is magnificent, as is Zeitoun, the maddening story of a New Orleans resident who is arrested during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for the dual invented infraction of being there and being of Syrian descent. In these books, he deals with serious issues in a serious way, largely subsuming his perspective in favor of those of his protagonists, and yet maintaining his authorial voice. That may not match his reputation, but that’s what I see in his pages. And that’s a big part of the reason I keep going back to those pages.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem
–Bradley Denton
–Zadie Smith
–Nick Hornby
–Kurt Vonnegut
–Thomas Hardy
–Harlan Ellison

 

My Writers: Harlan Ellison

I really wanted to be a science fiction fan when I was in middle school and high school. It seemed the proper extension of my geeky interest in comic books, albeit an extension that, I felt at the time, carried more of a veneer of respectability. This was a lifetime ago, when the great writers of science fiction–Isaac Asimov, Rad Bradbury, Philip K. Dick–were spoken of with reverence, essentially elevated to take up the cool kid table of the emerging twentieth century canon. I tried repeatedly to embrace this particular brand of genre writing, but I have to admit that it never fully took for me. There was one writer, however, who ensnared my imagination like a beast locking down its powerful jaws. Ironically enough, he first did it through exposing me to the vast array of great science fiction writers who he admired, or at least felt had created works that were worthy of being assembled in one place, their literary acumen and social foresight so strong and strident that he could unhesitatingly deem them soothsayers.

I got Dangerous Visions from the Stoughton Public Library, the unsettling green cover well buffered by some two decades of readers who’d preceded me. The 1967 collection, a mighty five-hundred-plus pages (or, as Ellison chose to enumerate it, “two hundred and thirty-nine thousand words”), aimed to bring together works by the best speculative fiction writers of the day, leading with Lester del Rey and continuing all the way to Samuel R. Delaney’s seismic “Aye, and Gomorroh.” Ellison immodestly carved himself a spot in the tome, with the beautifully titled “The Prowler in the City at the End of the World.” As proof that Ellison almost always approached writing as an wordy game of three-dimensional check, his piece also served as a sort of answer to another in the book, Robert Bloch’s “A Toy for Juliette.” Ellison may have penned only a single fiction piece in the collection, but it truly seemed an expression of self, an agitated expression of the tremendous value of complex words put forth with fearless passion.

Perhaps aside from Joyce Carol Oates, I don’t think I’ve read another modern author who has such a mind-boggling command of the language, consistently crafting marvelous sentences that are pure and surprising. Ellison has a way of phrasing something in a manner that is entirely unique and yet seems so exactly, precisely right that it’s a wonder it doesn’t represent the way an emotion, a thought, a plot point has always been expressed. His brilliant inventiveness begins with the titles, a splendid litany of riddles that compel the reader to dive in and discover the secrets they hold: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” “The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin,” “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” and “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore.” They are bold enough to be a full-scale provocation, an invitation and a challenge all in one.

Provocation is a fitting word to apply to Ellison in general. A ferociously intelligent individual with a corresponding lack of patience for anything he considers the product of feeble thinking, Ellison has reserved some of his most fiery creative efforts for various invectives hurled against those who’ve wronged him over the years, although “wronged” may have a more complicated definition in Ellison’s world. It’s sometimes seemed as if his lawsuits filed were poised to outnumber his works of fiction, with Ellison regularly asserting the primacy of his creative constructs over the influenced echoes that may have come along later (most notably his litigation against James Cameron’s The Terminator, resulting in an acknowledgment of the film’s purported debt to Ellison inserted into the credit, much to the chagrin of Cameron). Ellison merely sitting and talking–with perhaps a few prompts meant to artfully poke at areas of his psyche previously rubbed raw and left to never heal–is a symphony of vividly articulate ferment, arguably as compelling as any of his writing. Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe him. Ellison doesn’t only show how words can be weapons. When he’s wielding them, it hard to imagine them as anything but.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem
–Bradley Denton
–Zadie Smith
–Nick Hornby
–Kurt Vonnegut
–Thomas Hardy

 

My Writers: Thomas Hardy

I was a bad English major. Truth is, I wanted to be a creative writing major, but my college didn’t offer that at the time. I opted for English, basically declaring it as soon as I got there. My was to take as many creative writing courses as I could–I believe the final count on that was two–and soldier my way through the literature courses that I was less-than-enthused about. I fully understand and believe that in order to write, one must first learn to read. The pathway to fine writing goes through the forest of ancestral authors, studying their mastery of the language as a means to achieve greater command over the creative process. I get that. I respect that. Utterly. And yet my problem is frightfully simple and more than a little embarrassing. I have a damnably difficult time connecting with fiction that isn’t roughly contemporary. The more of a crust of refined classicism resides upon it, my more likely I am to find it dull or even impenetrable. This is plainly a personal and intellectual flaw, but it remains there, even now.

I attribute my problem somewhat to the parade of stiff, stilted classic literature that was foisted upon me during high school, and then never contextualized by the teachers in a way that would make it come to life, or at least seem relevant. This was the canon, after all. It’s resounding value was self-evident. This ground me down, even though I was a exhaustive reader, always ready to be enthralled. The classics became the grudge work I finished in order to read something that I wanted to read. That persisted into college, unfortunately, as professors tended towards the most tiresome explications of every little nuance of a work until it no longer seemed like writing and became algorithms built from words, exactly the sort of regimented material I was trying to escape by running from math and science into the sloppy embrace of literature.

It probably wasn’t as dire as I’m making it seem, and there were several writers whose work held the proper wonders for me. But there was one in particular who transcended my unfortunate predilections, whose voice seemed as sharp and contemporary as that of any author issuing material with contemporaneous copyright dates. It didn’t exactly open floodgates to an appreciation of writing that had at least a century’s worth of dust on it, but it gave me all the sensations of intellectual stimulation that I hoped for every time I cracked a new book. This was my uncommon reaction when Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure was assigned in one of my college literature courses.

I was engrossed in the book, especially fascinated by the sardonic way Hardy unpacked the causation and perpetuation of human misery. He demonstrated a keen awareness of our shared failings, particularly the was that base instincts can lead to drastically faulty decision-making. There was a sharpness and freedom to his language that heightened this quality, a beautiful use of the great variances of words, but never done in a way that favored the flowery over the clear. It wasn’t dainty and overly elegant in the way I was accustomed to seeing writing from roughly the same time period, but was instead muscular, shrewd and pointed. It was terrific, by any measure.

I still find this to be the case when I, admittedly infrequently, dip into Hardy’s words anew, most recently in reading Far From the Madding Crowd. The plumbing of motivation is extraordinary, the attention to detail wonderfully acute. Beyond the plentiful signifiers of a bygone era, the writing strikes me as notably modern, truly achieving the sort of timelessness that’s often ascribed to other works that seem to me woefully stuck in their respective eras (like–oh, I don’t know–a novel about the doomed quest to slay a large sea mammal that devotes endless pages to heavily detailed explication of the ins and outs of whaling). I’d honestly be grateful if there was the necessary kinetic movement from whatever spring needs to pop in my brain to make me more open to classic literature, but I don’t expect it to happen. At least I’ve got Hardy to provide some amount of reassurance that I’m not a complete philistine.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem
–Bradley Denton
–Zadie Smith
–Nick Hornby
–Kurt Vonnegut

 

My Writers: Kurt Vonnegut

As I sheepishly acknowledged in the last installment of this series, I didn’t discover Kurt Vonnegut when I probably should have. I’m not sure where he settles into the canon right this moment, but Vonnnegut was a staple of high school English courses when I was going through that particular hellish passage of educational servitude. He showed up on no assignment lists at the school I went to, though. And since my taste for recreational reading was generally a little more proudly juvenile or at least distinctly less-than-challenging. Like Sam Weir, my ill-advised, kneejerk reaction to reading something that was likely to be assigned, even elsewhere, was a lot of moaning. My dumb attitude prevented me from finding my way to a lot of great writing.

High on that list of exceptional writers is Vonnegut. In fact, I think it was several years later before I read any Vonnegut, at least at length, when a person I like a great deal finally broke down my defenses. I received a copy of Mother Night in the mail after we’d seen director Keith Gordon’s very fine film adaption at the Chicago International Film Festival. She apparently thought–quite correctly–that I needed to further my education. Of course, the book was excellent. It not only boasted an ingenious plot and sharp, incisive writing, but Vonnegut elegantly threaded in philosophical musing in a manner that was never intrusive. Indeed, it’s such a central part of his appeal that entire wildly popular lists can be generated through artfully selective culling of his writings.

Since confessions seem to be integral to my discussions of Vonnegut, I’ll note that my belated epiphany about his excellence didn’t turn my into a completist about his works. As much as I admire his work, I’m still woefully under-read when it comes to his bibliography. There’s just so many books on the “to read” pile and it grows larger every day, definitely a rate that exceeds my pace of consumption. In a weird way, my extreme affection for his writing despite the relative lack of thoroughness on my part makes the connection feel more powerful to me. It’s not obsession but admiration. And I guess part of the appeal is that I know he’s always out there. The man may be gone, but there’s a wealth of him to be had when I’m ready for it. So it goes.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem
–Bradley Denton
–Zadie Smith
–Nick Hornby

 

My Writers: Nick Hornby

There was a specific point, lost to me now, when I decided that I absolutely needed to read Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. I truly wish I could credit the periodical or person or television interview or whatever that caused me to purchase the novel at the earliest opportunity. Similarly, I don’t remember buying it, and barely remember reading it the first time. In a weird way, High Fidelity just resides in my head as a permanent edition, as if it had been there always. There’s a decent reason for that, and it relates directly to why Hornby fits into this series. Much as I wish I had been one of those cool teenagers who related intensely to the work of Kurt Vonnegut or read On the Road to tatters, the truth is that the first novel that spoke to me so deeply that it seemed to represent me, express something of myself that I seemed unable (or, probably more accurately, unwilling) to acknowledge was High Fidelity.

The book was first published in 1995, but the paperback edition I own arrived in the fall of 1996. I was twenty-six. Like the book’s protagonist, record store owner Rob Fleming, I had a romantic history that was both pained and yet open to fair mockery. And music was interlocked with that experience as surely as if they were the two strands of my moody DNA. As Hornby wrote, in the voice of Rob, “What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?” These certainly struck me as reasonable questions. Did I salve my wounds with U2′s “All I Want is You,” or did I try to live up to the anguish heartache traced in its lyrics?

Beyond that relatability, I found to book to be genuinely funny–it remains of the rare instances in which I was roused to laughter by a novel–and admired Hornby’s ability to burrow into the thought process of his major character. Hornby manages to have Rob make choices that are both obviously terrible in the moment and yet full understandable as a route for the character to take. That continued with his next novel, the perhaps even better About a Boy, which was built around the well-traveled trope of a caddish adult becoming a better person through his unlikely friendship with a emotionally stunted yet intellectually precocious kid whose chief problem is loneliness. In effect, they help each other grow up. The skeleton of the plot may be familiar, but Hornby injects it with wit and energy. At his best, he has the vital, elusive, largely indefinable trait that every writer longs for: a distinctive voice.

Hornby has slipped away from me somewhat as I’ve found later works increasingly lacking, and his rambling essays for The Believer and other publications pendulum between messily charming and tiresome for me. But I admire the consistency of that voice, often grounded in the way pop culture simultaneously reveals and shapes an individual. Even without that, he remains forever a favorite because of the way he once wrote my autobiography (and I suspect the autobiography of many of my peers) before I was able to get around to it.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem
–Bradley Denton
–Zadie Smith

 

My Writers: Zadie Smith

I understand and accept that I offer nothing strikingly unique to literary discourse by noting that the first Zadie Smith novel that knocked me out was White Teeth. The British author’s 2000 debut novel was one of those vivid pop culture sensations, the sort of book that everyone needed to read, properly informed opinions formulated and shared among their erudite friends and associates. It eventually won a gaggle of awards and dotted countless year-end “best of” lists, different critics competing to see who could offer the most effusive praise while anointing Smith an “important new voice.” It was a practically unquestioned requirement that anyone who cared about great writing should get their hands and eyes on it as soon as possible.

Naturally, it took me a while to finally get around to it. There were a few reasons for this, none of them good. There may have been a delay, but my reaction was right in line with the general consensus. The intertwined stories of U.K.-based families with widely different backgrounds offered a thoughtful examination of the multicultural mix that typifies modern society, and the tricky ways those different trajectories can change the path of surrounding lives. The prose itself was arguably even more impressive than the storytelling and the theme, operating with dense, immersive sentences that demanded attention. Happily, they rewarded attention too.

After that, my devotion to Smith’s writing was pronounced and near-complete. I actively sought out Speaking with the Angel, the charitably-inclined short story collection curated by Nick Hornby, largely because of the promise of a Smith short story (the terrific “I’m the Only One”), and raced through any other piece of writing I could find. I’ll admit I wasn’t unreservedly thorough, taking the advice of one my most dependable literature guides, my friend Holly, and skipping Smith’s sophomore album, The Autograph Man, in the interest of preserving the affection. This invaluable Sherpa also gave me assurances that the follow-up, 2005′s On Beauty, wasn’t just worth the time, but was again a spectacular must. Hell, if anything, it’s even better than the vaunted debut. Holly was entirely right, as is often the case in all matters relating to bound pages (and, it should be added, televised girl detectives).

Of all the writers that have been included in this series thus far, Smith is the first one who’s younger than me. That’s weirdly humbling (and, like all instances in which I’m reminded, however briefly, of my age, it causes my right knee to suddenly start to ache), but it also provides a dose of good news. I’m certain I’ll have the pleasure of continuing to read Smith’s words for many, many years to come.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem
–Bradley Denton

 

My Writers: Bradley Denton

When I was younger, I was certain I should like science fiction and fantasy fiction. All the indicators were there, led by an endless affection for the wildly creative worlds found within the pages of comic books. There’s an awful lot of overlap in the Venn diagram that illustrates the people those different fandoms have in common. Besides working my way through the J.R.R. Tolkien books in my household, I actively sought out new and classic science fiction books, creating an especially nerdy history on the account associated with my library card. There was also my hometown bookstore with the ambiance of the inner reaches of a mailbox. While attempts to find major bestsellers were likely to leave patrons flustered, there was always a generous supply of vividly-covered sci-fi paperbacks that looked as though they’d been salvaged from the heart of vicious windstorm. Sampling from those offerings proved to be disheartening, so I sought out guidance wherever I could. Luckily, there was at least one source that steered me to fine works with admirable consistency.

Ridiculously devoted to making sure I received each and every issue of each comic title I collected, I spent my middle school and high school years as a member of subscription services offered by different major retailers. One of those was Denver’s Mile High Comics, which was kind enough to include a monthly promotional publication entitled Mile High Futures with every chunky package they sent my way. I believe it the regular column written by Edward Bryant that introduced me to several satisfying genre works, including a book by first-time author Bradley Denton called Wrack & Roll. Though fairly categorized as science fiction, it’s more accurately termed an alternate history, diverging first when Franklin Delano Roosevelt chokes on a chicken bone in the nineteen-thirties. In this version of the global culture, rock ‘n’ roll, slightly retermed, is inextricably linked with the political fate of humanity. The bulk of the novel follows famed Wracker Lieza Galilei–the daughter of legendary singer Bitch Alice, a performer who was martyred in a spacecraft explosion on the moon–with her actions holding the key to preventing a worldwide disaster.

I’d been hesitant to connect with the other sci-fi I’d read, put off by a level of heavy seriousness I couldn’t quite get past. Wrack & Roll was entirely different, notable for its rambunctiousness, its vibrant energy, its overwhelming sense of intellectual freedom. As far as I could tell, it adhered to no paradigm. It was its own entity, finding snarky truth in a philosophy inspired as much (or more!) by the the snotty agitation of the burgeoning indie rock scene as by any worldview steeped on literary constraints. Much of the science fiction I’d read to that point was overly constrained by literary aspirations, an almost needy attempt to be serious art. Wrack & Roll hardly inverted that–it wasn’t willfully trashy–but it operated entirely on its own terms, finding (and forging) merit entirely under its own terms. It was funny, eloquent and sharply astute entirely under its own terms.

Denton’s name was locked into my brain, so much so that I automatically scoured the robust sci-fi section of the preeminent bookstore in my college town for his name. That how, I’m fairly certain, I found my way to his follow-up, the uniquely titled Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede. I can say that the book looms large for me for an entirely bizarre reason, but even aside from that, I’d have an enormous affection for it, given the sharpness of its satire and the fullness of its characterization. Like all of Denton’s work that I’ve read, it’s constructed with a devotion to the integrity of its internal world that should be the standard of modern fiction, but is often disregarded in favor of whatever sensational aspect is most likely to grab broad attention.

I passed around Denton’s books as enthusiastically as I would have had I’d written them myself. In fact, I have a few friends who have been more thorough in their commitment to Denton than I’ve been, in part, perhaps, because of my influence. That’s got to be one of the clearest indicators of an author’s influence, doesn’t it? That the words they’ve constructed and shared become as vital to share as the most pressing daily news? Or, to traffic in the terminology used for this series of posts, when an author crossed over to being one of “my writers” to being someone who needs to be shared with as many people as possible. From almost the very beginning, that’s who Denton has been to me. I don’t even own a copy of Wrack & Roll any longer. I loaned it out long ago. If the person I gave it to got even a sliver of enjoyment out of it, then it was a worthy sacrifice.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt
–Jonathan Lethem

 

My Writers: Jonathan Lethem

I was voraciously seeking out new fiction in the late nineteen-nineties, no doubt partially inspired by the fact that it was realistically the first time in my life I had enough disposable income to regularly offer business to local bookstores without worrying about which pantry items might need to be forgone for the month to accommodate my reading habit. I looked to as many sources as I could find to get the lowdown on intriguing new works, even this crazy new outlet for information–a veritable superhighway of information, if you will–that showed up on the computer screen after a series of piercing tones delivered over the phone line. I recollect, for example, reading an online article that made me think, ‘I think I should see out this book with the strange title of Motherless Brooklyn.’ To further emphasize how long ago this took place, I’m pretty sure I purchased the hardcover book at the local Border’s.

Motherless Brooklyn was hardly Lethem’s first novel, but he acknowledged that getting into the head of his Tourette syndrome afflicted protagonist, private detective Lionel Essrog, opened up his writing like never before. It loosened him up, make his engage with language in a freer was that added an new intensity to his prose. I didn’t have a point of comparison, but I could sense the energy in the writing. Lethem grounds the book in the comfortable trappings of genre, but finds ways to scratch at something deeper, more existential, using Essrog’s condition to probe the elusive nature of the human mind. It is thoughtful and punchy at the same time. As with many of the writers who I return to over and over again, I was entirely hooked and devoted by the midpoint of my first exposure.

For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of Lethem is the way he routinely grapples with his formative influences in public, as if his writing career is a prolonged dialogue with his audience, not that far removed from late night, half-buzzed dorm room conversations about which “Rowdy” Roddy Piper movie is the coolest (while Lethem’s established choice in that debate is a fine one, I’m afraid there’s a better option that he’s neglecting). Some of my favorite writing by Lethem is collected in The Disappointment Artist, a grateful consideration of the likes of John Cassavetes, Star Wars and, best of all, Jack Kirby. While his non-fiction is rife with this sort of thing, it’s also infused his fiction, notably in the thickly epic The Fortress of Solitude, a story of kids growing up in New York City, largely set in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. Lethem piles on the pop culture references, which help distinctively lock the story into a time and place, but mostly provide a glimpse into the echoing comic books, movies and music that fill the author’s brain. The whole reason I have Donny Hathaway and Dennis Coffey songs in my iTunes is because of the loving references in Lethem’s book.

There’s an intellectual rambunctiousness to Lethem’s writing that I especially appreciate. His mind seems restless when he writes, as if he’s trying out his ideas on the fly and openly offering them up for not approval, but open-hearted sharing. He’s including the reader on his own journey, which can make his books fairly unwieldy (Fortress of Solitude, in particular, in occasionally dizzying in all it’s trying to do) but also indicates a thrilling artistic generosity. Some writers can be above it all, detached from their readers. Lethem often seems grandly motivated to get as close to those readers as he possibly can.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck
–Donna Tartt

 

My Writers: Donna Tartt

In some respects, I’m not entirely sure I should even include Donna Tartt on this list. Unlike those writers that have preceded her in this informal tally and most who will follow her (certainly all of them in the initial ten that inspired the series), I haven’t read pages upon pages of her prose. In fact, I’ve only read one book. Of course, she’s only published two, so I’m not doing too bad on a percentage basis.

It is a fair indicator, then, of just how much I value that one book. The Secret History was published in the fall of 1992 and I often think of it, perhaps erroneously, as the first novel I bought for myself to read after graduating college. Meaning, it was the first book I chose once I was freed from the educational tyranny of assigned texts, when reading could finally fully and completely take the place of studying. I can still remember pulling it off the shelf at Little Professor Books in the mall in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, surveying it like it was a treasure, a sensation terrifically easy to conjure up due to the striking design of the cover, accentuated by the clear plastic book jacket. I’ve already noted the ways that different authors represented steps towards adulthood, and that was definitely the case with Tartt. There was a clear divide between being a student who occasionally found time for recreational reading and a graduate who had no syllabus whatsoever dictating my selections. The Secret History was freedom in the form of bound pages.

Of course, the irony of that situation is that the novel centered on a college student, and one who happened to be buried under a shifting mountain of classical writing. The story follows Richard Papen, a young man living a modest, lonely existence in California who gains entry to a small private college in Vermont, eventually making his way to a particular elite group of students that engage in concentrated studies of Ancient Greek with Classics professor Julian Morrow. It is more than a class or a study group, and is instead almost a perverse sulf-sustaining ecosystem of oddly erudite psychodrama, often co-opting the mores of centuries earlier. Naturally, it leads to darker and darker places.

It was certainly no mystery why I might particularly relate to a story of a young, directionless, even somewhat misanthropic man who found his place in college, especially at that point in time. But I was also attracted to the merging of liveliness and intellect in Tartt’s prose. There was a psychological acuteness to everything she wrote, a compelling ability to burrow into her characters, knowing just how to reveal their inner beings through the comments, actions and, importantly, inaction. Beyond that, there was a fluidity to the writing that was the perfect counter to some of the stiffness that I’d endured in various classes.

At the time, I was ready to follow Tartt absolutely anywhere, which led to the sole time in my life I’ve purchased an issue of GQ, just because Tartt had a short story in it (anyone who’s spent a little time in my presence can assure you I wasn’t buying it because of an abiding interest in fashion). That noted, Tartt’s sophomore effort, The Little Friend (released a decade later), has sat on my shelf for years, untouched except for instances when it was moved from one spot (or one state) to another. I’ll get to it someday, even if I’ve actually been dissuaded from reading it by one of my most trusted literary compatriots. I owe it to Tartt. She gave me so much with that first assemblage of words. How can I not following her deeper into the dark woods, even if I suspect trouble may be waiting.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King
–John Steinbeck

 

My Writers: John Steinbeck

Though I loved reading throughout my school years, and therefore happily gravitated to English courses and even majored in English in college (along with Communication, because I decided to double-down on degrees bereft of vocational utility), I generally had a pretty strong aversion to the literature that became assigned text. Employing some junior league psychology–a field I never studied at all, so a whole shaker of salt should accompany this observation–that was in part a small act of rebellion from a kid who was too skittish to push back against authority much more than that. But it was also because we were continually assigned musty old material that didn’t speak to my personal experience, not one bit. The language was stiff and off-putting, the characters immersed in conflicts that meant nothing to me, steeped as they often were in privilege or outdated challenges. I understand (and, to a degree, understood) that this was necessary, studying the classics to understand what was modern. Still, why would any teacher expect a teenager to become enraptured by the whaling minutiae in Moby Dick?

So when I was finally assigned an author who brought grit, fire, truth and a passage for the strong earthiness of language, it was a thrilling revelation. That he also wrote about the downtrodden and dismissed with empathy, wisdom and anger against the ruling class that continuously holds them back was a tremendous bonus, given that my own nicely aligned political passions were first starting to stir at the time. That book that was first assigned, I believe in ninth grade English class, was John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

I suspect the 1937 novel made its way into a lot of high school curricula. It has strong, sharply defined characters, clearly drawn conflicts and a complex and slippery moral compass, ideally designed to provoke classroom conversations. It mixes adult thoughtfulness with a straightforward approach that isn’t going to leave behind even the more inattentive, unskilled readers. What appealed to me, though, was the sense that Steinbeck as writing straight from the gut, doing the best he could to carry forward the voices of those who were largely disregarded by his rough contemporaries. F. Scott Fitzgerald may have found his version of the American story in exposing the hollowness of the glittering surface of upward mobility, but Steinbeck understood that upward mobility was purely imaginary for the bulk of the citizenry, especially at the time he was writing.

Being a fairly obsessive young soul, whose ridiculous comic book collecting habit taught me that if I committed to something, then I had to have it all. Complete collections were always the goal, so I threw myself into reading Steinbeck, getting as many titles from the school library that I could, and redirecting any open class assignments that I could into fresh excuses to read a different Steinbeck novel. In one of those instances, I got my hands on The Grapes of Wrath. The book about the destitute, struggling Joad family was specifically cited by the Nobel committee in handing him their prize in 1962. For me, it was devastating and transformational. I well remember reading the last pages in relative solitude in my home living room one Sunday, closing the book and nearly shuddering at the resonant bleakness of the conclusion.

I kept reading, always finding pleasure in the way Steinbeck made certain that the humility of his prose matched that of his characters. I got that from the relative major works, such as Cannery Row and even Travels with Charley, but also from the relative obscurities I found lurking on the shelves, such as The Moon is Down, which drew its inspiration from the Nazi occupation of Norway (it was probably there in the first place because my small community had a pronounced interest in all things Norwegian). Steinbeck was one of the first writers who truly taught me the power of words. And all because a slender paperback was handed out one day in class.

Previously…
–An Introduction
–Margaret Atwood
–Anne Tyler
–Michael Chabon
–Ian McEwan
–Don DeLillo
–Stephen King