Jeffrey Greene's latest book is The
Golden-Bristled Boar: The Last Ferocious Beast of the Forest (University of
Virginia Press, April 2011). He is also the author of the memoir French Spirits and Water from Stone, about land restoration, the protection of endangered species and
environmental education. He has published four collections of poems, most
recently Beautiful Monsters (2010). He
has won the Randall Jarrell Prize and the Morse Poetry Prize, and his
work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at
the American University of Paris.
On your nightstand now:
Graham Robb's Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris and Alan Riding's And the Show Went On. On my "Shuffle," I have Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Anaïs Nin's A Journal of Love. I never read them before, and I am teaching a course called "Writing Paris: A Cross-Genre Workshop."
Favorite book when you were a child:
My mother read a wonderful, eclectic range of books to my brother and me, including A.A. Milne, Greek myths and the Odyssey. But I loved Thurber's My Life and Hard Times.
Your top five authors:
Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickinson and Whitman. I know, I know, not very original, but those are they.
Book you've faked reading:
Well, I faked about a million while taking my comprehensive examinations in graduate school. But I'd have to say David Copperfield. No excuse, because it's a wonderful book. I promise to finish it!
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. I would go to the library and play the old record of Eliot reading. Incredible.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I buy books for their covers all the time, but there is almost always something about the subject matter or author that draws me. Most recently I bought The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King. I just thought the title sounded interesting. We'll see.
Book that changed your life:
The first novel I read was Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. It was that book that made me understand the visceral power of writing to create a world, fill it with characters, and make the reader care deeply.
Favorite line from a book:
Can I cheat??? Can it be my favorite sentence instead of "line"? By Keats:
This living hand, now
warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed--see here it is--
I hold it towards you.
Favorite quotation:
Oscar Wilde on his deathbed. "Either this wallpaper goes or I do!"
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I know people will roll their eyes, but I have to say War and Peace. I even loved the historical digressions. Don Quixote is right there, too.