Which book do you wish your children loved, and why?

If I had children, or if only my dogs could read, definitely Alice in Wonderland. It resonates at every level of your life. If I had kids, I’d want them to mostly be immersed in fantasy, which is Alice in Wonderland, but you also have this darkness in the great tradition of the old fairytales.

Complete this sentence: I am more likely to be friends with someone who has read…

Elizabeth Bishop.

Do you have a sentimental attachment to a physical copy of any book?

A graphic novel published in 1928 called The City by Frans Masereel. I came upon it in a secondhand bookstore in New York and got it for $1.75. One of the images inside the book was a woodcut of a kinetic urban scene, and it captivated me. At the time I was writing a memoir, an ode, to the city. The images were a mixture of childlike awe, apprehension, fear and terror. Interwoven, it almost adds up to a movie, and that was at the time cinema was emerging as an art form. I wrote about The City for The New York Times. I covet that book and would be devastated to lose it. [big_image]

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Which writer in history would you ask out on a date?

Elizabeth Bishop and Emily Dickinson come to mind, but it’s weird because they’re the most preternaturally shy women on the planet. Maybe Edna O’Brien — she’s supposed to be really fun in bed.

What is the book that you always meant to read, but never did and, let’s face it, probably never will?

One that I keep trying to read, that I feel like everyone who’s cultured should — The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. But that’s only one of them. This is coming from someone who hasn’t read The Iliad.

Which book has haunted you most, and why?

The books, or better, the stories that have haunted me very much, are Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield" and E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman.” [big_image]

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You are on a quest to save the world. Who are the three writers on your dream team?

Well, Shakespeare would have to come along — and Tolstoy and Joseph Conrad.

If you could get away with it, which writer’s work would you steal?

Certainly Walt Whitman and W.G. Sebald. Maybe various phrases from Rainer Maria Rilke and I guess Robert Frost, Joseph Mitchell. I think everyone aspires to John McPhee.

Think of a title for your biography.

Standing(,) Still

What are you reading right now?

Healing Performance and Ceremony in the Writings of Three Early Modern Physicians: Hippolytus Guarinonius and the Brothers Felix and Thomas Platter, by M.A. Kersky. The Empathy Exams, by Leslie Jamison. The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez. [big_image]

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Which writer in history would you challenge to a duel?

Hitler, insofar as he authored Mein Kampf, would have been a writer I'd have liked to have dueled and out-dueled. The rest, or most of them anyway, are never so heinous as to merit a serious showdown.

What is the best book to give as a gift?

The Collective Works of William Shakespeare, but you’ve got to figure everyone already has that. The Faber Book of Reportage — nonfiction from the beginning of recorded history.

Characterize your personality with one book.

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What is your guilty pleasure read?

I have no taste whatsoever for things like The Da Vinci Code or James Patterson. For me, it’ll probably be the sports pages.

Gun to your head, which author is the voice of our times?

Roberto Bolaño.

In one sentence, why do you love books?

Because the world is vast and random and ultimately kind of inexplicable and books, be it fiction or nonfiction or poetry, offer you a temporary stay from the randomness — to stop time and visit with a world that, even if make-believe, is a dam against all the chaos. When I say the world is a vast, chaotic experience, I don't mean that in a disparaging way. If I could speak from the biological perspective, I think it's the most wondrously complex mystery around, but we can only begin to scrape at the depth of that complexity. Let me add another form — music, too, any great symphony. What great books and great symphonies do is tear open the curtain and give us the longest possible peek at the unknowable-ness of it all. That's what great art does and that's what I love about books.

That’s a long sentence.

Yeah, my writing is full of them. [big_image]

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