Richard T. Kelly: The Book That…
What do writers read? We get under the skin of Richard T. Kelly before the start of his exclusive new monthly column here on Bookhugger next week.
The book that I first loved:
Probably Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the first Penguin Classic I bought with my own money – 80p new, as I recall.
The book that I keep by my bedside:
Tough Guys Don’t Dance by Norman Mailer – a divertissement from the heavyweight champ of American letters, but full of pleasures and useful tips.
The book I want to read next:
Hemispheres by Stephen Baker.
The book I loved as a child:
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the mother of all ghost stories.
The book that kept me awake at night:
Yukio Mishima’s The Sea of Fertility, a ‘tetralogy’, so requiring a good many sessions of burning the bedside lamp.
The book that made me laugh:
The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, rather an evil source of laughs, but they all count.
The book that made me cry:
The Brothers Karamazov, when Dmitri has his ‘good dream’ while asleep on the floor of the police station.
The book that changed my life:
Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, a more consummate exhibition of the novelist’s art than I could ever have imagined.
July 10th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
[...] Guys… but I love it, for all that it’s a pot-boiler, bashed out over a couple of months. (Over at Bookhugger I once called it “a divertissement from the heavyweight champ of American lette…) It’s almost like a dime-store compilation of Mailer Greatest Hits in its bite-sized menu of [...]