By the Book (7 page)

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 like 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.

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

Everything by Ernest Hemingway.

What don't you like about Hemingway?

Everything, except for a few of the short stories. His write-what-you-know dictum has no place in imaginative literature; it's advice for a journalist, not for a novelist or a playwright. Imagine if Sophocles or Shakespeare or Dickens had heeded that advice! And Hemingway's sentences are short and simplistic enough for advertising copy. There is also the offensive tough-guy posturing—all those stiff-upper-lip, don't-say-much men! I like Melville's advice: “Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.” I love Melville. Can you love Melville and also like Hemingway? Maybe some readers can, but I can't.

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

There's nothing I need or want to know from the writers I admire that isn't in their books. It's better to read a good writer than meet one.

Have you ever written to an author?

I've written to many authors; I love writing to writers.

And do they usually write back? What's the best letter you've received from another writer?

Yes, they write back. Gail Godwin writes exquisite letters. James Salter, too—and Salter uses an old typewriter and rewrites by hand. His handwriting is very good. He uses hotel stationery, some of it very exotic. Kurt Vonnegut was a very good letter writer, too. As you might imagine, he was very funny. Grass writes me in German and in English, which is how I write to him, but his English is much better than my German.

What book made you want to become a writer?

Great Expectations
.

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

There are a lot of outsiders in my novels, sexual misfits among them. The first-person narrator of
A Prayer for Owen Meany
is called (behind his back) a “non-practicing homosexual”; he doesn't just love Owen Meany, he's probably in love with Owen, but he'll never come out of the closet and say so. He never has sex with anyone—man or woman. Dr. Larch, the saintly abortionist in
The Cider House Rules
, and Jenny Fields, Garp's mother in
The World According to Garp
, have sex only once and stop for life. The narrator of
The Hotel New Hampshire
is in love with his sister. The two most heroic characters in my new novel,
In One Person
, are transgender women—not the first time I've written about transgender characters. I love sexual outsiders; the world is harder for them.

What's your favorite movie adaptation of one of your books?

Lasse Hallstrom's
The Cider House Rules
. I loved working with Lasse. I wrote the screenplay, but it is Lasse's film; he is why it works. I also think Tod Williams's
The Door in the Floor
is an excellent adaptation of
A Widow for One Year
; he smartly adapted just the first third of that novel, when the character of Ruth (the eponymous widow) is still a little girl. He did a great job; he was the writer and director, but I enjoyed working with him—just giving him notes on his script, and then notes on the rough cut.

If somebody walked into the space where you do your writing, what would they see?

There are two big tables joined in an L-shaped fashion, so that I can move from one to the other in a chair on casters. There is a large dictionary stand with an unabridged dictionary. There are windows on two sides of my office—lots of books and papers around. My laptop is at a small desk in a far-off corner of the room, removed from the work tables—strictly for correspondence. There's a couch, and—usually—my dog, a chocolate Lab, is somewhere in my office.

What do you plan to read next?

I plan what I write, not what I read.

John Irving
is the author of
The World According to Garp
,
The Cider House Rules
,
In One Person
, and
A Prayer for Owen Meany
, among other books.

Elizabeth Gilbert

What book is on your night stand now?

Rome
, by Robert Hughes. Though I'm finding it challenging to read about Rome without immediately wanting to run away to Rome.

When and where do you like to read?

When I am awake, and wherever I happen to be. If I could read while I was driving, showering, socializing, or sleeping, I would do it.

What was the last truly great book you read?

Nothing in the last few years has dazzled me more than Hilary Mantel's
Wolf Hall
, which blew the top of my head straight off. I've read it three times, and I'm still trying to figure out how she put that magnificent thing together. Now I'm on to its sequel,
Bring Up the Bodies
, which is nicely satisfying my need for more Thomas Cromwell.

Are you a fiction or a nonfiction person? What's your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?

I enjoy both, although I unfairly hold fiction to a far higher standard. With nonfiction, I figure I can glean something educational or interesting out of the book even if the writing is weak. But if the first chapter of a novel doesn't feel perfect and accurate to me, I simply can't read on; it's too painful. Meanwhile, my (very) guilty pleasure is tabloid journalism. I hate to say it, but I know the names of all the celebrities' babies.

What was the best book you read as a student? What books over the years have most influenced your thinking?

It was a big deal for me in high school to be introduced to Hemingway. I already knew that I wanted to be a writer, but the deceptive simplicity of his voice made writing seem realistically attainable to me—as though all you had to do was get out of the way and let the story tell itself. Of course, Hemingway isn't simple, and writing isn't simple, and I certainly didn't end up thinking like him in any way. But he did open up for me a marvelous expanse of possibility and permission, and just at the right moment.

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

My Life
, by Bill Clinton—purely as a study guide for how to win a second term.

What is your ideal reading experience? Do you prefer a book that makes you laugh or makes you cry? One that teaches you something or one that distracts you?

Oh, I just want what we all want: a comfortable couch, a nice beverage, a weekend of no distractions, and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence, and alter my thinking forever. Either that, or the latest photos of celebrities' babies.

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

The complete Wizard of Oz series, by L. Frank Baum. Over the course of those fourteen books, stalwart Dorothy Gale triumphs, step-by-step, through precisely what Joseph Campbell would later call “the hero's journey.” I think Dorothy may be the only little Midwestern girl you could ever put in the same archetypal category as Odysseus or Siddhartha. She was absolutely totemic for me.

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

Every few years, I think, “Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand
Ulysses
.” So I pick it up and try it again. And by page ten, as always, I'm like, “What the HELL…?”

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?

The poet Jack Gilbert. (No relation, sadly.) He's the poet laureate of my marriage: my husband and I have read him aloud to each other for years, and he exerts a subtle influence over the way we understand ourselves in love. I would like to thank him for that, but I've always been too shy to write him a letter.

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

If I'm reading for pleasure, I scrawl giant enthusiastic circles and exclamation points over particularly magical paragraphs. If I'm reading for research, it all goes neatly onto index cards and packed away into tidy shoeboxes.

What book made you want to become a writer?

Probably
Curious George
. Or one of the other first books I ever saw. I never recollect wanting to be anything else, is what I mean.

Read any good memoirs recently?

I lately discovered
A Three Dog Life
, by Abigail Thomas, and it's stunning.

What's the best movie based on a book you've seen recently?

Oh, come on, now—that's a setup! But since you asked, back in 2010 there was this nice movie with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem that really meant a lot to me.…

What do you plan to read next?

Ulysses
.

Elizabeth Gilbert
is the author of
Eat, Pray, Love
. Her other books include
The Last American Man
,
Committed
, and
The Signature of All Things
.

 

Fan Letters

Gail Godwin writes exquisite letters. James Salter, too—and Salter uses an old typewriter and rewrites by hand. His handwriting is very good. He uses hotel stationery, some of it very exotic. Kurt Vonnegut was a very good letter writer, too. As you might imagine, he was very funny. Grass writes me in German and in English, which is how I write to him, but his English is much better than my German.

—
John Irving

I've written to lots of authors—fan letters. From the heart.

—
Richard Ford

I'm afraid that I squander as much as 90 percent of my time writing letters—e-mails—to authors, my writer-friends. The problem is that they write back, and so do I. And suddenly the morning has vanished irretrievably, or ineluctably (as Stephen Dedalus would say). And I certainly receive many letters, a goodly proportion of them beginning bluntly: “Our teacher has assigned us to write about an American writer and I have chosen you, but I can't find much information about you. Why do you write? What are your favorite books? Where do you get your ideas? I hope you can answer by Monday because my deadline is…”