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| photo: Beowulf Sheehan | |
Joshua Kendall is a v-p and executive editor at Little, Brown & Co., where he serves as the editorial director of the Mulholland Books imprint. He has published the work of Lauren Beukes, Michael Koryta, J.J. Abrams, Robert Galbraith, Stewart O'Nan and Tana French, among others. He has also edited nonfiction projects like Argo and The Boys in the Boat, and brought back into print the classic works of Jim Thompson and Richard Yates.
On your nightstand now:
Nathan Ward's The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett. (I loved his book on crime on the Brooklyn waterfront; this book is even better.)
Robert Stone's Fun with Problems. (Every year, come springtime, I go mad for short fiction. Greg Jackson's Prodigals led me back to Stone, who may be one of the best contemporary writers obsessed with peril.)
Best American Mystery Stories 2014. (More spring fever: three true winners in the bunch.)
Alexandra Kleeman's You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. (Finished it last month but keep going back. Imagine feminist Saunders, channeling novelist Didion.)
James Dickey's Deliverance. (Given to me by my first boss, George Witte. Reread many times since. The holy grail of thrillers.)
Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips.
Favorite books when you were a child:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.
Dune by Frank Herbert.
Your top five authors:
Like any obsessive, this list is always in flux, but excluding my own authors: Thomas Harris, Elmore Leonard, George Pelecanos, Charles Portis, Graham Greene.
Book you've faked reading:
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.
Books you're an evangelist for:
Authors Ben Winters (Underground Airlines, The Last Policeman), Laird Hunt (Neverhome) and Ron Carlson.
Books you've bought for the cover:
Repeatedly, novels with covers designed by Keith Hayes, Gregg Kulick, Christopher Brand, Henry Yee, Emily Mahon and John Gall.
Book you hid from your parents:
None--my parents wanted me to read everything and anything.
Book that changed your life:
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
Favorite line from a book:
Right now, it's the last line of the first chapter of Ben Winters's Underground Airlines: "The waitress poked her head out, reminded me that she had the rest of my supper for me, all boxed up, and I could barely hear her, so busy was I composing this face of grief."
Five books you'll never part with:
I would die in the fire, having to choose.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Love this question! That would be J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.
What you love about being an editor:
Novels, and crime novels especially, are enactments of empathy. I still think of myself as a kind of broker or counselor for that experience, and I'm still amazed that I make a living doing it, and that so many brave people endeavor to be a part of that effort, from the bookseller in North Carolina to the writer in Colorado to the customer in Indiana.