In an email interview, the 85-year-old writer name-checked a memoir by the son of English missionaries and a humane novel about “a sorrowful life.” SCOTT HELLER
How do you organize your books?
Alphabetically, but there’s often a rogue letter, pushing its neighbors off the end. At the moment, it’s “F.” Back in the ’70s it was “B.”
What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
“Company Aytch,” by Sam Watkins. A Confederate soldier’s intimately detailed reminiscence of the agony and unspeakable horror of war.
What books are on your night stand?
Rereading: “Mysteries,” by Knut Hamsun. The craziest protagonist in literature. “Nightmare Abbey,” by Thomas Love Peacock. Delightfully pugnacious contempt for plot and human interest. Dostoyevsky, “The Gambler.” Nothing better on addiction.
What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?
That Hitler was lazy. From A.N. Wilson’s short biography.
What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
Probably Thor Heyerdahl’s “Kon Tiki,” when I was a boy. I read it in a pup tent with my sister.
What’s the last great book you read?
“Skylark,” by Dezső Kosztolányi. The life of an unattractive and unintelligent young woman living in a dreary backwater in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The depth of humanity Kosztolányi brings to the sorrowful life of Skylark and her adoring parents is magical, and rewards anyone who overcomes its modest premise. Reminiscent of Brian Moore’s “The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne,” also superb.
What’s the most terrifying book you’ve ever read?
Dante’s “Inferno,” because of Dante’s easily summoned malice. The Sea of Excrement, with its bobbing malefactors, is especially memorable. Sure rings a bell these days.
How did you decide that “A Wooded Shore” should be the new collection’s title story?
It’s more personal, less an artifact, in case I don’t do this anymore.
What’s the state of the literary community in rural Montana these days?
There isn’t one. But Missoula, Livingston and Bozeman have lively literary scenes.
“Whenever I’m in a bigger town for new tires, doctors or groceries, I’m on red alert,” you told The New Yorker. Is that anxiety reflected in your writing?
Probably so. I have a great capacity for imagining things going wrong. And leaving home is bewildering since I no longer recognize the country.
How have your reading tastes changed over time?
It’s been a process of learning what they are. I look for the subjective pulse of the author, of the kind I feel in Hamsun, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Turgenev. In much contemporary literary fiction, that’s often replaced by ingenuity. I’d be a terrible postmodernist: I’m not interested in ingenuity.
Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?
I read too many fishing and birding books. The books have the guileless charm of club-notes.
Do you think any canonical books are widely misunderstood?
Probably “Lolita.” I find the glorious writing under its cynicism disturbing. The “good” Nabokov of “Pnin” and “Speak, Memory” appeals to me more. The smirking Nabokov is tiresome.
Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine?
There are many, but let’s start with the two protagonists of L.P. Hartley’s “Eustace and Hilda.” Then Gogol’s Chichikov, Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick and Cervantes’s Don Quixote of Part II.
Your favorite antihero or villain?
You can’t beat Mephistopheles. Judge Holden of McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” takes stomach churning to new levels.
What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?
“Uttermost Part of the Earth,” by E. Lucas Bridges, is the memoir of a man born to English missionaries in Tierra del Fuego — a vast land, lightly touched by Europeans, at a time before many of its animals and most of its Indigenous people were extinct. These animals and people live again in its pages.
What’s the last book you recommended to a member of your family?
I recommended “Black Elk Speaks” to all of my children. I can’t promise they read it but some did. Essential reading in this part of the world.
If you could require the governor of Montana to read one book, what would it be?
Charles Darwin, “On the Origin of Species.” Breaking news: no dinosaurs aboard Noah’s Ark.
If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?
Harry G. Frankfurt, “On Bullshit.”
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Italo Svevo, Mark Twain, Machado de Assis. Lots of laughter, troubled gazes, leftovers.
The post Thomas McGuane: ‘I’m Not Interested in Ingenuity’ appeared first on New York Times.
