As February was winding down, I realised it had been some time since I picked up a book about writing and, so, I reached for The Writer’s Library (2020), which I found remaindered last autumn.

It’s a set of interviews conducted by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager which sounds a little fancy for the explosions of bookishness therein.

Of the 22 writers, only one is unfamiliar to me (Laurie Frankl, have you read her?) and now I am curious about her too, because she loved the Beverly Cleary books growing up, just as I did.[There actually isn’t much talk of writing, overall, so I picked up Claudia Tate’s Black Women Writers and Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act instead.]

Situationally, Nancy and Jeff have clearly scheduled these meetings, and sometimes there are details about those arrangements included (directions to bring a stack of favourite books, for instance…most of us just do that anyway, right?)

But some segments feel so comfortable that it seems they get together regularly. (That could be my imagination.)

Luis Alberto Urrea’s was especially like this, and it included this segment (which belies my observation that there isn’t a lot about writing in these interviews) about his experience meeting Ursula K. Le Guin, who came to be his mentor:

“She’d give me these insane bits of wisdom, because she was convinced I was actually going to do this thing—I was actually going to write—and she would tell me these things, like ‘I want you to remember something,’ and I said, ‘What?’  And she said, ‘Invariably, when men write about women, their characters in some part of the book will stop before a mirror and say, ‘My god, my breasts are magnificent.’ And I just was dying, you know? And I didn’t know if she was serious or not. And she smacked her hand on the table, and she said, ‘We don’t do that!’ I said, ‘I’ll remember. I will remember.’”

Of course, what I was hoping for was a set of new reading recommendations, and there are plenty. T.C. Boyle and Donna Tartt had the most recommendations in my notes, by the end of the book.

And I also appreciated that some discussions made me determined to actually read a book I’d long meant to read anyhow. Like this, from Andrew Sean Greer:

“Colm Toibin almost never writes about being gay, but there’s something about Brooklyn that feels to me like a gay man telling the story of the struggles of identity, and expectation, and that kind of thing. I don’t know. So I think that’s an abstract way of thinking about it.”

But I didn’t pick up Booklyn yet. Instead, I went straight for Ellen Tebbitts (a Cleary reread, because of Siri Hustvedt’s enthusiasm for it in the third grade—the same author Frankl triumphs).

And for Peter Orner’s Am I Alone Here? because Jennifer Egan had this to say: “There comes a point where saying it’s one of your favorites doesn’t really mean anything if it’s been too long since your last reading.”

Orner’s book is a real favourite and its subtitle Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live explains it all. His blend of biography (his father has died) and daily life (fatherhood, husbandhood, etc.) with his bookish obsessions is just perfect for my taste. And I have been wanting to return to it since I first read it.

Mostly, however, I found myself flagging insightful phrases from the interviews that weren’t necessarily recommendations, but which brush up against why and how I read.

Like this, from Madeline Miller: “Sometimes you read the next book by an author because what you really want is more of the earlier book.” (This was true for me with A.S. Byatt: I wanted another Possession and had to wait for some time before I could accept Frederica on her own terms.)

This from Dave Eggers: “I never read for plot; even now I don’t really. It doesn’t matter to me that much what happens. I don’t turn the pages to see who did it. I’m reading for the quality of the prose, a way of seeing the world.” (I think of Anne Michaels’ Fugitive Pieces, with its language and structure presenting its own perspective.)

And this from Laila Lalami: “It’s the ultimate white privilege to be able to ignore politics.” (I came to Lalami through fiction—Secret Son, when it was listed for the Orange Prize, now the Women’s Fiction Prize—but it was her Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America which stands out for me…even though I avoided it originally because I’m not American.)

I’m a rather moody reader. If I don’t feel like biting my nails, Maus goes back into the stack for the moment. If I don’t want to sniffle, The Gathering remains untouched. If I only want a single chuckle, only a page of Kate Beaton gets read. If ‘traversed’ or ‘pettishly’ or ‘edification’ annoys, and nine words where six would do, Tom Sawyer is rebuffed.

But I’m always in the mood for a book about books.