Dani Shapiro: By the Book

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/books/review/dani-shapiro-by-the-book.html

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The author, most recently, of the memoir “Inheritance” turns to family and friends for reading suggestions: “My 19-year-old son is a voracious reader and constantly recommends books to me.”

What books are on your nightstand?

I fall asleep reading every night without fail, so I always have a teetering pile of books on my nightstand to nourish me before I drift off. I keep in mind Jane Kenyon’s lovely instruction to writers: “Have good sentences in your ears.” Late at night it isn’t large swaths of narrative I crave, but small gems — poems, prose that can be read in pieces, the strange, the spiritual, the beautiful. Currently the pile includes the graphic novel “Are You My Mother?,” by Alison Bechdel; “Sum,” by David Eagleman; “What the Living Do,” by Marie Howe; “A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety,” by Donald Hall; “A Path With Heart,” by Jack Kornfield; and “Silence: In the Age of Noise,” by Erling Kagge. Virginia Woolf’s “A Writer’s Diary” is never far from reach either. I dip into it at random, part of a conversation I’ve been having with Woolf since I began reading her in my 20s.

What’s the last great book you read?

“Exit West,” by Mohsin Hamid. I’d like to go back and reread it, in fact. I tore through it the first time as a reader, but I’d also like to study it as a writer, asking the question: “How did he do that?”

What do you read when you’re working on a book? And what kind of reading do you avoid while writing?

It depends on what I’m working on. For my latest memoir, I did a lot of research and reporting, so I was surrounded by stacks of scientific papers and books. I rented an office outside my home because I felt so overwhelmed by those stacks, and didn’t want to look at them all day, every day. I also read work that I find inspiring on the level of language. I love writers who take risks, break rules, don’t succumb to the censoring voice whispering that it can’t be done. When I read courageous work, my own courage grows. Two books I consistently return to for pure encouragement are “Turn” and “Daybook,” by the artist Anne Truitt, who was also a writer who wrote beautifully about the creative life.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Maria Popova’s forthcoming book “Figuring” delves deep into the interconnected lives of several historical figures including Maria Mitchell, America’s first professional woman astronomer. Later, as a professor at Vassar, Mitchell tells her students, America’s first class of women astronomers: “Mingle the starlight with your lives and you won’t be fretted by trifles.”

What moves you most in a work of literature?

The capacity to enter the consciousness, the inner life, of another human being.

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

I read mostly fiction, essays and poetry. I’m drawn to fractured narratives and linked stories, like Joan Silber’s “Ideas of Heaven” and Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From the Goon Squad.” I’ve also been particularly enjoying work that lives in the gray area, directly and transparently mining the writer’s autobiographical material in a work of fiction. Two favorite examples of this are Elizabeth Hardwick’s “Sleepless Nights” and Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being.” I don’t read much science fiction or fantasy.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or simultaneously? Morning or night?

I wish I could read electronically. It would make my bag a lot lighter! But I find it impossible to read on screens. These days I read several books simultaneously. I take myself to a cafe near my home to read during the day whenever I can. And always, late at night.

How do you organize your books?

Fifteen years ago, my husband, who is also a writer, and I moved from apartments to an actual house, with an actual library. In fact, the library was what sold us on the house. We alphabetized our thousands of books, and we also organized according to genre: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and literary journals — back issues of The Paris Review, Grand Street, Tin House, Granta, One Story and Antaeus take up a lot of space, but we have the space.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I’ve been reading vintage medical books lately, as research into the cultural history of reproductive medicine. For example, Wilfred Finegold’s 1964 tome, “Artificial Insemination.”

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

I don’t remember who first gave me Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “The Sabbath.” Nor who gifted it to me the second time, nor the third. I do remember that the third time was the charm, and now I reread Heschel each year as a reminder to slow down, that time is a cathedral.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I was a read-under-the-covers-with-a-flashlight kid. I was an only child, and books were my companions and my salvation. Judy Blume’s “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” was the book that pierced my sense of otherness and made me realize that I wasn’t alone or unique in the way I felt about myself and the world.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

“Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus,” by Mo Willems. It’s a children’s picture book and doesn’t have very many words.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Virginia Woolf had a complex, fascinating relationship with Sigmund Freud, who introduced her to the idea of ambivalence, and gave her a narcissus as a gift. I’d like to sit back and watch the two of them go at it, with Leonard as a referee.

How do you decide what to read next? Is it reviews, word-of-mouth, books by friends, books for research? Does it depend on mood or do you plot in advance?

I try to plot what to read next in advance, but it never quite works out that way. I have piles around my house: on my kitchen table, my office floor, even perilously on a banister. One of my life’s great pleasures is that my 19-year-old son is a voracious reader and constantly recommends books to me — often debut fiction. His latest favorites have been “There There,” by Tommy Orange, and “The Incendiaries,” by R. O. Kwon. I have several friends whose literary tastes align with mine, for instance, the Buddhist teacher and writer Sylvia Boorstein. Whenever she tells me to read a book, it vaults to the top of my list. Which leads me to my answer below.

What do you plan to read next?

“The Overstory,” by Richard Powers. I’ve been waiting for a good long stretch of days to dive into the world of it without interruption.