Do you prefer books that reach you emotionally, or intellectually?
Yes. (And I can’t be the first to answer that way, but there is no other answer.)
Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?
Horses, history, spaceships, motherhood, Gowanus bars, essays on post-human intimacy, poetry about the numinous toenail clippings of monarchist baristas, metafictional narratives about 1970s mall design, racing form cut-ups, absurdist picaresques featuring problematic celebrities, short fiction from the quiet desperation school, it’s all welcome. It just needs to be alive. The only genre I avoid is bored certainty.
How do you organize your books?
There is a vague tilt toward the alphabetical, but there’s also the question of rank, so that it kind of resembles a European football league system, with promotion to more prominent shelves for books I either currently admire or consider deeply formative, and relegation to bedroom and closet shelves, or even storage, for others. It’s always exciting when a book I’ve owned for years but never read, or started at the wrong time, or put down for some other reason, gets another look and earns a spot on the living room shelves in rapid, thrilling, sudden-death fashion. Thus, the legends of my bookcase are born.
What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
“The Blue Cliff Record.” In the few years since the publication of my last novel, “Hark,” which took satirical aim at the mindfulness movement (or, to be fair, its relentless monetization), I’ve been meditating and listening to lectures on Zen Buddhist koans, which I pay for on an app. Go figure.
What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?
My grandfather Sidney Irving Lipsyte was a New York City public-school teacher and administrator. He grew up in the Bronx, the son of an immigrant tanner, and was the most voracious reader I ever knew. He loved literature, and most of my early reading outside of school came from books he let me pluck from the shelves of the cramped labyrinth of a library he’d built by himself beneath his house, a warren of overstuffed bookcases organized by subject — fiction, poetry, history, philosophy, psychology — and, here and there, old wooden chairs and even a tiny desk at which to study them. He was my model for a reading life. Still, there was a particular book he was perhaps reluctant to part with. One Thanksgiving when I was little he hauled this giant, nine-pound orange book to the dinner table. It was the third edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia — an entire set in one volume. I think he’d assembled it over time, mailing away for each section. He was very proud of it. He hadn’t seen me in months and didn’t know that I’d recently made improvements in my reading abilities, and he announced to the family that he would give me the book if I could read a few sentences from one random entry perfectly. I don’t remember the topic, but I remember the glorious feeling coursing through me during the homestretch of the passage when I sensed I was going to succeed. I also can’t forget the half-admiring, half-crestfallen look on my grandfather’s face when he knew he had to part with his tome. I loved that pumpkin-colored behemoth and leafed through it constantly as a kid. It’s still on my shelf beside my desk and reminds me of one of my greatest teachers.
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