4/19/2007

Reading The Innocent, by Ian McEwan, who he described as the Alfred Hitchcock of the literary fiction world. Next he plans to read something by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., honoring his death.

His favorite books are Sophie's Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner, by William Styron and Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler, who he says has got insights into the uncanniness of human nature--her characters are alive. When he finished Amateur Marriage, which is about a couple's lives from just before World War II until they are in the 80's, he was left with tears in his eyes.

Writers, he says, usually have insights that other people don't have, they speak for you and through you.