Best-selling writer Anna Quindlen says her idea of a nightmare is that she’s on a plane flying from New York City to San Francisco and over Kansas she runs out of books. “In the way people are chain smokers, I’m a chain reader,’’ she says. “Finish one and pick up the next one.’’ Quindlen’s eighth novel, “Miller’s Valley,’’ was published April 5.
BOOKS: What are you reading currently?
QUINDLEN: I just finished a biography of Julia Ward Howe by Elaine Showalter. It’s yet another biography that makes me glad I was born in 1952 and not 1852. She was a significant writer and thinker whose husband went wild at the notion that she would have a public life. Right before that I read Anne Boyd Rioux’s biography of Constance Fenimore Woolson, who was also a significant writer of her time but who is best known for her friendship with Henry James. But typically I overwhelmingly read fiction.
BOOKS: Has that always been the case?
QUINDLEN: Even as a child I read mostly fiction, but I also read biographies about women of achievement. I was looking in books for a way to be. I spent an awful lot of time learning about Queen Elizabeth I, Florence Nightingale, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Some lovely librarian who recognized what a dissatisfied girl I was gave me a biography of Betsy Ross, but the entire time I kept thinking, “She’s famous for sewing!’’
BOOKS: What was your last favorite novel?
QUINDLEN: Every time I go on book tour I try to sell someone else’s book. Alice McDermott told me that she thought I had sold more copies of “Charming Billy’’ than she had. On this book tour I’m going to talk about “Stoner’’ by John Williams, which the New Yorker once described as the greatest American novel you never heard of.
BOOKS: Any other favorite novelists you wish were better known?
QUINDLEN: I really like Ford Madox Ford and Theodore Dreiser, and both have fallen out of favor. “The Good Soldier’’ and “Sister Carrie’’ are both indelible novels, and it doesn’t seem like anyone reads them anymore. There are two British female novelists who are popular there, but I wish were better known here. Mary Wesley, who didn’t publish her first adult novel until she was 71, writes beautifully about women. Elizabeth Jane Howard’s series, the Cazalet Chronicle, is just irresistible.
BOOKS: Are there any classics that still intimidate you?
QUINDLEN: There’s one answer to that. “Ulysses,’’ “Ulysses,’’ and “Ulysses.’’ My eldest child, who is fearsomely well read, rings the gong for “Moby-Dick’’ every five or six years. I crawl back into the book and crawl back out unpersuaded. I believe fiction can be divided into two categories, warm books and cold books. Quinn, my son, tends to like cold better. He likes Melville and Joseph Conrad. I veer toward warmth. The biggest disagreements we have ever had are over “Moby-Dick’’ and Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth.’’ When he finished that he told me Lily Bart was an idiot!
BOOKS: What else do you read?
QUINDLEN: I really like the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, whose collection “Neon Vernacular’’ won the Pulitzer. Everything he writes is worth reading. When I’m revising my own work I read nothing but mystery novels. I don’t feel the least bit apologetic about that because I feel like we are in a golden age of mystery writers, such as Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Tana French, or C.J. Box.
BOOKS: What other kind of books do you own?
QUINDLEN: I have this wonderful book that my kids gave me for my birthday about a young woman who drew nests, “America’s Other Audubon’’ by Joy M. Kiser. I collect nests. I have them all over our house in Pennsylvania.
BOOKS: How do you pick what you are going to read?
QUINDLEN: It usually has to do with the author. You send me anything by Rosamund Lupton, and I’ll read it. Same with Don DeLillo. If you send me his grocery list I’ll put it under glass.
AMY SUTHERLAND
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