Jason Roberts is the author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins, $26.95, 0007161069), a narrative nonfiction rediscovery of James Holman, a forgotten
sightless adventurer of the early 1800s. A member of the San Francisco
Writers' Grotto, Roberts is also the inaugural winner of the Van Zorn
Prize for fiction by emerging writers, awarded by Michael Chabon. Here
he answers a series of questions we occasionally ask people in the
industry.
On nightstand now:
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner. It's set in Namibia, which gained independence from South Africa in 1990, and it draws upon Orner's own experiences as an English teacher there. Not a long book, but one I'm wanting to take my time with nevertheless. Orner has an intense, amazingly compressed style, one comparable to (but not reminiscent of) Nabokov. Some chapters are only a few paragraphs long, but that's all Orner takes to set you reeling. I'm savoring this one.
Favorite book when you were a child:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Everyone remembers Mrs Whatsit and little Charles Wallace, but do you remember the book's central evil (a crime perpetrated by a disembodied brain named IT)? It was persuading people to give up their individual rights and freedom in the name of security.
Top five authors:
Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, Anthony Burgess, Theodore Sturgeon (Theodore who? Discover him for yourself).
Book you've "faked" reading:
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. In college. I didn't NOT read it, in the sense that I dutifully raked my eyes across every page. But I certainly didn't engage with it as anything other than a pile of words. That disconnect should have shut me up in classroom discussions, yet, regrettably, it didn't.
Book you are an "evangelist" for:
East Wind, Rain by Caroline Paul. It's a fictional retelling of an incredible accident of history. Turns out that in 1941, one of the Japanese Zeros attacking Pearl Harbor crash-landed on Ni'ihau, Hawaii's most isolated island. The natives didn't even have a radio to tell them there was a war going on, and they ended up sheltering the injured pilot for several days. On those bare facts, Paul builds a beautifully wrought love story and a vivid portrait of this unique, private island, deliberately kept out of sync with the times by its owners. I particularly tout it to book clubs and reading groups.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and the Journey by Isabel Fonseca. It was the combination of the evocative title and the stark black-and-white image--a young Romany girl, staring unguardedly into the camera--that hooked me. Fortunately, it's a book that's even better than its packaging.
Book that changed your life:
A torn paperback edition of The Martian Chronicles that Ray Bradbury inscribed, "To Jason--Good luck with your writing!" Just a polite scribble, but to a 14-year-old boy it read like a precious validation of a true calling.
Favorite line from a book:
Right now, it's from The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo: "Not yet morning and Obadiah sits in the paling darkness in his blue chair and caresses his new Grundig radio." Dang.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen: "the common miracles--the murmur of my friends at evening, the clayfires of smudgy juniper, the coarse, dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do."
(And a bonus question.) What song do you wish was a book?
Pocahontas by Neil Young. I mean, c'mon: "Aurora borealis/The icy sky at night/Paddles cut the water/In a long and hurried flight." That song IS a book--or at least it offers a more substantial, unforgettable procession of imagery than most books. It also has an unreliable narrator, tragedy commingled with deadpan humor, and a special guest appearance by Marlon Brando.
On nightstand now:
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner. It's set in Namibia, which gained independence from South Africa in 1990, and it draws upon Orner's own experiences as an English teacher there. Not a long book, but one I'm wanting to take my time with nevertheless. Orner has an intense, amazingly compressed style, one comparable to (but not reminiscent of) Nabokov. Some chapters are only a few paragraphs long, but that's all Orner takes to set you reeling. I'm savoring this one.
Favorite book when you were a child:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Everyone remembers Mrs Whatsit and little Charles Wallace, but do you remember the book's central evil (a crime perpetrated by a disembodied brain named IT)? It was persuading people to give up their individual rights and freedom in the name of security.
Top five authors:
Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, Anthony Burgess, Theodore Sturgeon (Theodore who? Discover him for yourself).
Book you've "faked" reading:
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. In college. I didn't NOT read it, in the sense that I dutifully raked my eyes across every page. But I certainly didn't engage with it as anything other than a pile of words. That disconnect should have shut me up in classroom discussions, yet, regrettably, it didn't.
Book you are an "evangelist" for:
East Wind, Rain by Caroline Paul. It's a fictional retelling of an incredible accident of history. Turns out that in 1941, one of the Japanese Zeros attacking Pearl Harbor crash-landed on Ni'ihau, Hawaii's most isolated island. The natives didn't even have a radio to tell them there was a war going on, and they ended up sheltering the injured pilot for several days. On those bare facts, Paul builds a beautifully wrought love story and a vivid portrait of this unique, private island, deliberately kept out of sync with the times by its owners. I particularly tout it to book clubs and reading groups.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and the Journey by Isabel Fonseca. It was the combination of the evocative title and the stark black-and-white image--a young Romany girl, staring unguardedly into the camera--that hooked me. Fortunately, it's a book that's even better than its packaging.
Book that changed your life:
A torn paperback edition of The Martian Chronicles that Ray Bradbury inscribed, "To Jason--Good luck with your writing!" Just a polite scribble, but to a 14-year-old boy it read like a precious validation of a true calling.
Favorite line from a book:
Right now, it's from The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo: "Not yet morning and Obadiah sits in the paling darkness in his blue chair and caresses his new Grundig radio." Dang.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen: "the common miracles--the murmur of my friends at evening, the clayfires of smudgy juniper, the coarse, dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all I do."
(And a bonus question.) What song do you wish was a book?
Pocahontas by Neil Young. I mean, c'mon: "Aurora borealis/The icy sky at night/Paddles cut the water/In a long and hurried flight." That song IS a book--or at least it offers a more substantial, unforgettable procession of imagery than most books. It also has an unreliable narrator, tragedy commingled with deadpan humor, and a special guest appearance by Marlon Brando.