1).
What was your favorite book as a child?
The
title eludes me and the book is long gone, but I repeatedly read a fat collection
of one-page biographies. In particular I remember the lives of Charlemagne,
Marie Curie and Nikola Tesla. Second place goes to a plump paperback, Facts about the Presidents, which ended
with Kennedy. Fiction wasn’t important until I was ten, when I discovered Edgar
Rice Burroughs.
2).
What’s the last really good book you
read?
Imaginary Conversations by Walter Savage
Landor. Make it a split decision: Italo Svevo’s Zeno's Conscience.
3).
Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction?
Why?
Except
for a roughly ten-year period in my teens and twenties, always nonfiction,
particularly biography, history and essays. I don’t know why. When I read
fiction today, it’s usually something familiar, literary comfort food.
4.)
Do you finish every book that you start?
If you don’t, how do you decide when to stop reading?
This
remains the one compartment in my life where I indulge in guilt-free selfishness.
If a book is dull, I chuck it. That was not a luxury I permitted myself when
young. Books were serious business and they had to be read cover to cover.
Anything less I understood as a personal defeat.
5.)
List your ten favorite books in four
minutes or less. Write it down because you’ll revisit it at the end.
As
of this hour:
Life of Johnson, James Boswell
The Geography of the
Imagination,
Guy Davenport
Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
Plays, William Shakespeare
Witness, Whittaker Chambers
The Complete Poems, Philip Larkin
American Musicians II, Whitney Balliett
Between Meals, A.J. Liebling
Essays, Michel de Montaigne
6.)
Do you reread books? Which ones?
Most
of my reading is rereading. See 3.).
7.)
Do you read poetry? Why or why not?
Poets
are in regular rotation – Larkin, Shakespeare, Swift, Winters, Pinkerton, Cunningham,
Bowers, Dickinson, Sissman, C.H. Sisson, Stevie Smith, Hecht. Why? Pure pleasure.
8.)
Do you remember the first "grown-up"
book you read?
No.
It’s not a distinction I’ve paid much attention to. Maybe Thurber. Maybe
Steinbeck. Now I think of both as essentially children’s writers.
9.)
Are there any authors whose work you
have read completely?
Shakespeare,
Melville, Jane Austen, others.
10.)
How often do you read books that are
more than one hundred years old?
Another
trifling distinction.
11.)
Is there a type (or types) of book you never
read?
Self-help,
science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, psychology, sociology, most books about
politics, anything about finance and economics.
12.) How do you choose what to read?
A
question so simple I’m not certain how to answer. Instinct? Momentum? Chance? I
know with certainty I’ve never engaged in high-minded reading regimens or “self-improvement,”
or restricted my reading to writers of specified demographics.
13.)
What’s more important to you: the way a
book is written, or what the book is about?
Another
distinction without a difference. Liebling’s The Sweet Science is about boxing, a subject without interest to me,
and I reread it every few years.
14.)
What author, living or dead, would you
most like to have dinner with?
Dr.
Johnson or Liebling. Both understood the importance of food. Boswell reports
the former saying: “Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or
pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very
studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind
his belly, will hardly mind anything else.”
15.)
If you could hang out with a literary
character for the day, who would it be?
I
have no idea.
16.)
If you could be a literary character,
who would it be?
Ditto.
17.)
Have you ever written a fan letter to an
author?
Often.
And I still do.
18.)
Is there any book that, if I professed
to love it, you would be turned off? Is there any book that would impress you
in particular?
To
the first question, A Public Burning
by Robert Coover, a work of pornographic seditiousness. To the second, no.
19.)
Is there a book you feel embarrassed
about liking?
Not
anymore. I’m not that important and neither are you.
20.
Are there books you feel proud of liking or
having finished?
Why?
21.)
Have you ever lied about having read a
book?
I
lied about a lot of things when young. Are people even capable of being impressed
anymore by the books other people read or claim to have read?
22.)
Do
you keep track of the books you read?
Titles
and dates, no. Why bother? I do copy out passages I want to remember.
23.)
How do you form opinions about what you read?
I
poll a random sampling of strangers. They tell me what to think.
24.)
What authors do you think are overrated?
Underrated?
Where
to start? Let’s limit this to winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Overrated? So many to choose from, but I’ll single out Toni Morrison as a
writer without redeeming literary qualities. Underrated? Rudyard Kipling, the
best writer of short stories in English.
25.)
Do you ever read self-help books?
Marcus
Aurelius, William James, Eric Hoffer.
26.)
What’s a book that shocked you?
I
was in the book section of the May Co. department store in Cleveland, in the
mid-nineteen-sixties. I found an anthology of recent America poetry, read a
poem by Allen Ginsberg and saw fuck
in print for the first time. I was shook. I didn’t know you could do that. Or
why you would want to.
27.)
If you could force every person you know
to read one book, what would it be?
I
don’t mean to be a prig about it but I don’t like the idea of forcing anybody
to read anything. Illiteracy is its own punishment.
28.)
What book would you recommend to me in
particular?
Recommending
books, especially to people you don’t know well, is dangerous, like giving advice.
Too many people can end up hurt and disappointed. The best reading is self-driven.
Time and serendipity are the best critics.
29.)
What books/authors have you been meaning
to read for years? Why haven’t you read them yet?
Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. I don’t know.
30.)
What kind of book do you consider “a
guilty pleasure?”
That
applies to music and especially movies, not books.
31.)
Has a book ever changed your mind about
something?
Not
in any immediate, obvious way. I’m with Jacques Barzun in A Stroll with William James: “I am not the fortunate sort of person
who can feed his mind and guide his moral conduct with the aid of a single book
or author. I am naturally polytheistic and fastidiously (I hope) promiscuous.”
32.)
If you were terminally ill, what book or books
would you read?
What
I’ve always read. Why deny myself the proven pleasures?
33.)
Do you have any passages of poetry or prose
committed to memory? Can you recite something to me?
Plenty.
From the second of Allen Tate’s “Sonnets at Christmas”:
“Ah,
Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky
And
I must think a little of the past:
When
I was ten I told a stinking lie
That
got a black boy whipped; but now at last
The
going years, caught in an accurate glow,
Reverse
like balls englished upon green baize
Let
them return, let the round trumpets blow
The
ancient crackle of the Christ's deep gaze.”
34.)
If you could change anything about the
way you read, what would it be?
I
would add a couple of foreign languages, especially Italian for the sake of
Dante, Leopardi and Montale.
35.)
Was there any time in your life when you felt as
if a book guided you in a profound way?
Never.
36.)
Return to the list you made at the
beginning. What titles, if any, would you change after our conversation?
None.
If, however, I could have eleven, I would add Moby-Dick. Or Lives of the
English Poets. Or Gulliver’s Travels.
Or A Dance to the Music of Time. . .
3 comments:
You gave out a top ten a while back which included many of today's top ten. Surprised that Jane Austen hasn't featured in either. Is there a reason for this?
This is an absolutely stellar blog post. Full of wisdom, humor, and great good sense.
I learn more from Mr. Kurp daily than almost all the professors I had in college.
Really enjoyed reading this. Foreign authors missing though, excepting the Italians. As for Tale of Genji, I think (hope) you'll be very pleasantly surprised; please try the old Waley translation in the Modern Library edition. In any event, I've joined the tribe of Kurpophiles.
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