On your nightstand now:
My next book. I know how self-important that sounds, but it's giving me so much trouble that I find it impossible to give another author any attention at all. But the last book I read was Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which excited me less than I'd hoped. As soon as I've finished this book, though, Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March will follow.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I was obsessed with science fiction as a child, and I remember being particularly taken by Jack L. Chalker's Well of Souls series, which mixed sci-fi and fantasy to an extraordinary degree.
Your top five authors:
Tough one, but I'll give it a shot. Milan Kundera, simply for The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Immortality, which rank, for me, as two of the greatest novels ever written and a real inspiration for any novelist looking to see what can be done with that flexible form, the novel. James Joyce brought me to writing as a life aim. John Le Carre's work in the '70s remains unsurpassed in the spy genre. Ernest Hemingway, despite the weathering he's taken over the years, remains a favorite of mine, and in a similar vein so do those delicate jewels that Raymond Carver wrote before he died too young. There are more . . .
Book you've faked reading:
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. I don't usually fake having read books, but it was a party, it was late, I was drunk, and . . . well, you know.
Book you're an evangelist for:
During my U.S. book tour last summer, I was surprised by how few people had read Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and found myself rabidly evangelizing in every city. It's a wonderful book I reread yearly to remind myself how good the spy genre can be, and how far I still have to go.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The aforementioned Austerlitz. Still haven't read the damned thing, though.
Book that changed your life:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce. I was in Zagreb at the time, 19 years old, just learning how to smoke and drink. The book was assigned reading, but I was swiftly sucked into it. There's a famous scene where the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is on a beach. From what I remember, he sees a girl and a bird taking flight, and in that moment is struck dumb by the realization that he must become an "artist" to create "life out of life." The passage floored me, and as Stephen had his epiphany, I had the same one. I closed the book and lay on my dorm cot and decided that if I could have that kind of effect on someone, simply through the use of words, I could die happy. That's how I became a writer. Unlikely, but true.
If you could choose an author to review your book, who would it be?
Another tough one. The problem is that I read the question as, "What author would you most like to love your book?" Le Carre comes to mind, though I'm not the kind of person to bet he would actually review it kindly. Milan Kundera? Oh how I'd love him to love it! Sadly, though, I doubt he would.
Favorite line from a book:
I'm not a quoter--my memory is too shoddy for that--but this is something I do remember repeating to friends after I'd read The Honourable Schoolboy by Le Carre: "At bad times in his life--money, children, women all adrift--there had been a sense of peace that came from realizing that staying alive was his only responsibility." It's sometimes given me a sense of peace as well.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--simply because I want to know if it would have the same incredible effect on me again. The fear that it won't has kept me from ever rereading it.