My favorite childhood book
The Phantom Tollbooth.
I loved the wordplay, the humor and the fanciful characters, and the wild imagination.
And some science fiction and fantasy gets really risque.
Outside it looked likeLord of the Rings, but on the inside it wasFifty Shades of Grey.
The best book I read for school
Moby-Dick.
I thought it was extraordinary.
The book that cemented me as a writer
Franny and Zooey.
I was obsessed with J.D.
Salinger when I was younger.
And I likedCatcher in the Rye,but I lovedFranny and Zooey.
That was a great influence on me.
Its a spiritual book, but its also very funny and entertaining at the same time.
Theres a lot of connections between me and Salinger.
The book that people might be surprised to learn I love
M. Scott PecksThe Road Less Traveled.
Its treated like self-help, but its a brilliant part-memoir, partpsychological treatise of the human condition.
Classics Ive pretended to have read
Never finishedCrime and Punishment,The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov.
When people talk to me about Dostoyevsky, Im like, Ohhhhhh, yes, Dostoyevsky.
Classic Im embarrassed to say Ive never read
Theres so many.
Ive never readThe Grapes of Wrath.
Everyone says Grapes of Wrath is pretty great, but I kinda saw the movie.
That was the origin of raisins, I think.
One that made me cry wasAngelsby Denis Johnson.
Its about people at the end of their rope, looking for love in all the wrong places.
My literary hero
Conan the Barbarian.
He solves all his issues with a sword.
Im a neurotic guy, filled with angst, and life is so simple for Conan.
And I remember feeling like, Why wouldnt they stay with them?
I want to live under the water with the sea nymphs.
The last great book I read
George SaundersTenth of December.
Its hard to put a finger on what Saunders does, but he does it expertly.
Its likeTwilight Zonemeets Raymond Carver meets David Sedaris.
The stories are funny and almost science fiction, but literature at the same time.
