Nytimes Review Amor Towles a Gentleman in Moscow
By the Book
The All-time Book That Amor Towles Ever Received as a Souvenir
"My wife gave me the starting time edition of Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' to exist published in English (in 1886)," says the novelist Amor Towles, whose new book is "The Lincoln Highway." "That the edition was in translation was only as well, since I don't read a word of Russian."
What books are on your night stand?
For the last 16 years, I've been reading with iii friends. Every month, we see in a restaurant in New York City to discuss a novel, arriving at 7 and lingering until they close the identify. Nosotros typically pursue projects. One spring we read Henry James's "The Portrait of a Lady," Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," George Eliot's "Middlemarch" and Leo Tolstoy'south "Anna Karenina," a project we referred to as "19th-Century Wives Under Pressure." Often, we'll read 5 or six works by a single writer chronologically. Nosotros're about to launch into a survey of the Australian Nobel laureate, Patrick White. And then, his "The Tree of Man" is at the top of my pile.
What's the concluding great volume you read?
Earlier this year, I was asked to write an introduction for the forthcoming Penguin Classics edition of Ernest Hemingway's get-go novel, "The Dominicus Also Rises." I enjoyed rereading the book immensely. Hemingway began writing it on his 26th birthday, most a hundred years ago. At the time, he was yet married to the first of his iv wives. By trade, he was nevertheless a foreign correspondent living in Paris. It was earlier his trip to Africa to hunt big game. Before his face would beautify the encompass of Life magazine — 3 separate times. Before the compromising furnishings of fame, wealth and recognition. So, in picking upwards "The Sun Too Rises" today, we have the opportunity to set bated what we remember we know about Hemingway equally a man and author, to set bated what we remember we know almost his style, to read the volume as if information technology were newly released, and to be amply rewarded for doing so.
Tin a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose?
Groovy writing can make about anything interesting. Whatsoever subjects, whatever settings, whatever themes. But for me, bad writing is an insurmountable obstacle.
Describe your platonic reading experience (when, where, what, how).
When I was a college sophomore in the early 1980s, I had the good fortune of being admitted to a fiction writing seminar with a visiting modernist named Walter Abish. Equally part of the class, he gave us a list of nigh a hundred novels that he admired. The list included an array of inventive writers and stylists, most of whom I had never heard of, including Donald Barthelme, Italo Calvino, Evan Southward. Connell, Julio Cortázar, Jean Genet, Elizabeth Hardwick, Knut Hamsun, Milan Kundera, Grace Paley and Alain Robbe-Grillet. With the listing fraying in my pocket, I began tracking downwardly these novels whenever I was in a used bookstore. For the next few years, as soon as school would let out, I would retreat solitary to my family'south summer house, where I would sit on the porch and read one book a twenty-four hour period. It was pure elation. It also had a lasting influence on me as an creative person.
What's your favorite volume no one else has heard of?
Harry Mathews's "Cigarettes." The but American-born member of the experimental confederacy Oulipo, Mathews often wrote about shattering conventions, and thus his work can be somewhat uneven. But in "Cigarettes" he gives the states a sly, inventive and entertaining novel which is a racy investigation of midcentury New York society.
Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire well-nigh?
I admire a lot of my contemporaries as writers. But Ann Patchett is someone I admire not simply as a writer, but as an advocate for independent bookstores and new voices, as half of a chiliad matrimony, equally a svelte thinker, a sly humorist, a generous spirit. I could go along.
What practice y'all read when you're working on a book? And what kind of reading practise you lot avert while writing?
Before I prepare out on a new project, I like to read a scattering of novels written in (and ideally fix in) the time menstruum in which I'm about to immerse myself. My new novel, "The Lincoln Highway," takes place over 10 days in June of 1954, then in anticipation I read a number of American works from the mid-50s including James Baldwin's "Go Tell Information technology on the Mountain" (1953); Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye" (1953); Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Human Is Hard to Find" (1955); and Sloan Wilson's "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" (1955). What I dear in item about this list of concurrent classics is how varied they are in terms of geography, tone and theme. In aggregate they provide a snapshot of America'south socioeconomic, regional and racial diversity. They likewise showcase very different approaches to effective storytelling.
Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?
During the summer I like to read crime and suspense novels past individual authors in chronological guild. In recent summers I've read the Lew Archer novels past Ross Macdonald, the George Smiley novels by John le Carré and the Parker novels by Richard Stark — all terrific. This summertime I've been reading the Bosch books by Michael Connelly, which are and so exactly correct.
Do you distinguish between "commercial" and "literary" fiction? Where's that line, for y'all?
Not really. I'chiliad more interested in distinguishing books that are well written, rich and multilayered from those that aren't (preferring to read the former and skip the latter). If we look back at those books that have survived for more than half a century, they tend to be well written, rich and multilayered, but in their time some were classed every bit commercial and others as literary.
How do y'all organize your books?
I keep what I admire close at hand.
What book might people be surprised to detect on your shelves?
The shelves in my study are almost exclusively weighed downwards by books, with a significant weighting to novels. But there are a few exceptions tucked in among the books including DVD sets of the complete original "Star Trek" and "The Rockford Files." No explanation necessary.
What'due south the best book y'all've ever received equally a gift?
"A Admirer in Moscow" was published inside days of my 20th anniversary. To gloat, my married woman gave me the first edition of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" to be published in English (in 1886). That the edition was in translation was just too, since I don't read a discussion of Russian.
What's the last book you recommended to a fellow member of your family unit?
When my son was near 10, nosotros went to London together, where our visit to the Churchill war rooms proved to be a highlight. Last yr — when he was 18 — we had great fun reading "The Fantabulous and the Vile," Erik Larson's rip-roaring description of Churchill'southward kickoff year as prime minister, a year that coincided with the Blitz.
What kind of reader were yous every bit a kid? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
My discovery of reading as a consuming pleasance began with the Hardy Boys. As a middle-class family unit in the early 1970s, we didn't dine out or travel that much. Just my male parent was e'er willing to buy us a volume. The summer I discovered the Hardy Boys mysteries, I would spend the twenty-four hours reading ane of them from beginning to cease, then make my father have me to the bookstore so that he could buy me the next volume. A few years afterwards, it was the works of Ray Bradbury. Then Tolkien. And and so on.
Whom would you want to write your life story?
I have no want to take my life story written. But if information technology were a necessity, I would ask it be written by someone who would leave my life virtually unrecognizable. Someone like Gabriel García Márquez or Franz Kafka.
You lot're organizing a literary dinner political party. Which three writers, expressionless or alive, do yous invite?
Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville and Bob Dylan. Information technology would either be the most interesting dinner of my life, or the one with the most awkward silences. Maybe both.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/books/review/amor-towles-by-the-book-interview.html
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