A recent documentary explores the conflictive relationship between the British author and his most popular work, which became a scandalous phenomenon due to Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation
Belita Gracia was one of the many women photographers who seemed condemned to oblivion until Ana Valiño discovered her story. From that fortunate encounter came an exhibition, the first major public recognition the León native received a few days before she died at 101
Virginia Woolf once wrote that “for most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” The work of Belita Gracia remained hidden throughout her life in albums she kept at her home in Barcelona. A few months after turning 101, much of her photography came to light in an exhibition in her hometown.
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| James Baldwin |
Baldwin by Nicholas Boggs review – the relationships that drove a genius
A new biography puts Baldwin’s sexuality – and the men he loved – front and centre
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| Dave Eggers |
As his new novel is published, the US author talks about nurturing the next generation of creatives, debating Sam Altman – and why he writes on a boat in San Francisco Bay
Neilson Barnard
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| Claire Fuller |
| The |
The novelist on being inspired by Shirley Jackson, discovering the brilliance of Denis Johnson, and finding comfort in Elizabeth Strout
My earliest reading memory
When I was five and starting school, I would catch a coach from the Oxfordshire village where I lived. Twice a day I read the little metal plaque screwed to the upholstery, which gave the warning “Mind your head when leaving your seat”.
My favourite book growing up
In the late 1970s my dad had a copy of Phenomena by John Michell. Each page covers something strange, which might or might not be true: showers of fish, stigmata, spontaneous human combustion. I would lie on the carpet flicking through the pages and loving the chills it gave me that (maybe) there could be such weirdness in the world.
The book that changed me as a teenager
When I was 14, I was Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard in a school production of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. It was when we were reading those mellifluous words aloud that I first understood that writing could make me feel everything.
The book that changed my mind
Learning to Love You More by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. The book is a list of assignments: some very simple (take a picture of under your bed), and others more challenging (have a one-person demonstration). The public assignments terrified me, but I discovered that I loved having done them and I’ve been searching out that feeling ever since.
The book that made me want to be a writer
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. It was the first book I read through a writer’s eyes, trying to work out how Jackson created the extraordinary Merricat and how she made me feel so much for her.
The author I came back to
I read Angels by Denis Johnson about 15 years ago and thought, “what’s all the fuss?” And then I read Train Dreams and then Jesus’ Son, and now his books are among my favourites ever.
The book I reread
There’s only one book I keep on my desk while I’m writing: Wildlife by Richard Ford. I often pick it up and read a page or two to remind myself what it is I’m supposed to be doing.
The book I could never read again
Last year I read and loved Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry but I’d never read it again because it’s 843 pages and there are too many other books I want to read.
The book I discovered later in life
I missed out on nearly all the classics when I was younger so last year I decided to read one a year, starting with Pride and Prejudice. And yes, I rather enjoyed it.
The book I am currently reading
I run a book club at the Cabinet Rooms in Winchester. And as well as our regular monthly choices, I’ve selected The Stand by Stephen King to read over the course of a year. I cannot wait to pick it up again.
My comfort read
I have a comfort author: Elizabeth Strout. I love her writing, her stories, her characters. I’ve just finished her latest, The Things We Never Say, and it was a delight.
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist
| The |
The US author, film-maker and Zen Buddhist priest on smart young girls, the difference between irony and cynicism, and working her way through 13 volumes of Chekhov
My earliest reading memory
I was reading – or pretending to read – before my brain could encode memories, so probably around three or four? I “read” Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, but that was mostly pictures.
My favourite book growing up
Charlotte’s Web by EB White. For years, I remembered it as a story about a little girl named Fern who saved her pet pig, Wilbur, but it’s not. It’s a story about a writer named Charlotte, who happens to be a spider, who spins words into her web that save Wilbur from slaughter. It’s about the power of language to save lives. Looking back at the books I’ve written, I can see now that all of them are an attempt to recreate Charlotte’s Web. It’s the perfect book.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Teenagers change constantly, hour by hour, book by book. I read voraciously as a teenager because we didn’t have smartphones, and every book I read left its mark. The Catcher in the Rye certainly was one of them. I must have read it when I was 12 or 13 and learned two skills critical for my adolescent survival: a disaffected attitude and how to spot a phoney.
The writer who changed my mind
Every writer I read changes my mind. Isn’t that the point of reading? But OK. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I read it in 1975 in Nepal, when I was 20, during a month-long trek in the Himalayas from Pokhara to the Tibetan border. That was 50 years ago, and there were very few trekkers back then. We had no GPS. I was trekking with my friend, following winding trails across the mountains, through forests of bright pink rhododendron. Sometimes we’d pass sherpa heading down to town. Their donkeys wore bells on their harnesses, and we could hear them echoing long after they’d passed. I didn’t know the term “magic realism” yet. I just knew that magic was real.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Most of the books I read as a child were about smart little girls (or spiders) who were writers: Harriet in Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh; Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women; Emily of New Moon; Anne Frank; Meg in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – she wanted to be a scientist, but still. And then there were books about obstinate, contrary, misbehaving little girls, like Eloise, Madeline, and Pippi Longstocking, who were obviously destined to be writers even if they didn’t know it yet. I’d also argue that any story told in the first person by a misfit female narrator, like Jane Eyre, is about being a writer, since their subtext is always “Dear reader, I survived to tell the tale.”
The book or author I came back to
I don’t really have a simple answer to this question, so I’d rather talk about Kurt Vonnegut, whose novels I read and loved when I was younger, but who I haven’t revisited. Why? I learned something important about humour from Vonnegut. About the difference between irony and cynicism. About earnest irreverence. That it’s OK to be funny about serious things. I hope I would still find this quality in his books, but what if I didn’t? I’d rather just keep his tone alive in my mind.
The authors I reread
Poems and poets: Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop. I tend to give their books away and then buy new ones. I bought Geography III after reading Bishop’s poem One Art in the New Yorker in 1976. That poem is all about loss. Every time I survive another loss, I reread it, and every time I reread it, I am reminded of how to survive.
The book I could never read again
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig. I love Zen. I love motorcycles. I loved this book when I was a teenager, and I’m still inspired by Pirsig’s ideas about quality and craft. But when I tried to read the book again as an adult, I found the narrator’s pomposity irritating. Naturally I didn’t notice it earlier, when it was eclipsed by my own teenage pomposity.
The book I discovered later in life
A 13-volume set of Tales of Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett, first published in 1929 and reissued in 2006. I was never much interested in short stories until I started teaching the form in a fiction-writing class and realised I had a lot to learn. There are 201 stories in the 13-volume set. I’m still reading and learning.
The book I am currently reading
Sublimation by Isabel J Kim. It’s a debut set in contemporary alter-worlds of Seoul and New York. It’s a take on the classic immigrant story, wherein the characters, at the moment of border crossing, split into two selves. As a mixed race person, I can relate. I’m also reading The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century, which is excellent.
My comfort read
Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories. I am comforted by the brevity of her stories and the precision of her sentences.
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