We hear a version of the question often. By "we" I mean those of us whose desks, bookcases and floors are essentially buried in an avalanche of advance reading copies. The primary question isn't, as might be expected, "How do we clean this mess up?" The question is: "How do we decide which ARC to read next?"
I tend to make impulsive reading decisions, like a kid in a toy shop ("I want that one! No, that one!"), but a recent experience has me thinking about the question in a new way. I'm currently reading three great ARCs simultaneously, all because of a conversation. The books are:
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (Knopf, March 2012), a memoir woven into the chronicle of her solo, three-month hike on the PCT in 1995.
Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron (Algonquin, January 2012), a novel about a gifted young runner caught in the Hutu-Tutsi conflicts of his native Rwanda.
Contents May Have Shifted by Pam Houston (Norton, February 2012), a fictional tour of the world through a series of personal vignettes.
So how did I decide these were the ARCs I would read next? And why read them at the same time? It took a trip across the country to make the decision for me. On October 1, I was in Denver at the MPIBA trade show, where Cathy Langer, lead book buyer for the Tattered Cover Book Store, introduced her three guests--Strayed, Benaron and Houston--at an "Authors of Future Releases Breakfast."
This wasn't a standard writer-talks-up-her-book presentation. It was a conversation. Langer began by asking about the complexities of the "I" character, even when, as is the case with Benaron, the story is told in third person about a man living in another country. 
"You take the stuff that happened in your life and you shape it into something beautiful," said Houston, whose protagonist in Contents May Have Shifted shares her first name. She recalled that her editor told her "we want them to think it's Pam and it's not Pam," but Houston also cautioned that she moves freely across the blurred borderline between fiction and nonfiction. "I was James Frey's first writing teacher. He took intro to creative writing from me," she said, drawing a laugh. 
Strayed discussed her approach with Wild, which is an account of something that occurred 16 years ago. "My book is me, but it's sort of the younger me." With her first novel, Torch, "I took my life and made a lot of other stuff up about it. To me, the job of the nonfiction writer is to say, 'Here's me'; to make that personal story a universal one."
Benaron, who was writing about a country and culture with which she has developed a deep personal connection, observed: "I think this complex layering of truth and fiction makes a powerful statement about art."
Langer also asked the authors how the "physical" aspect of their experiences affects their work.
"I really decided to take this trip at the lowest moment of my life," Strayed said. "I went from weeping and wailing every day to confronting the reality of the hike. You set the boundaries, and every day you go out."
Houston spoke of the advantages of "feeling fluid in the world. That you can go and have a degree of safety no matter what is happening."
Benaron, a triathlete, said, "You get to the point where you don't think you can go on, and then you just take one step at a time. You're so focused on right now, right now, right now."
All three noted the importance--in what is perceived as a solitary profession--of encounters with others in the world, ranging from Benaron's connections with the people and culture of Rwanda to Strayed's experiences on the PCT. "All summer long, I would meet people and we would bond," Strayed recalled. "The hikers had their own subculture and language."
Houston added: "One of the things I'm interested in is the way people use language and the impact it has upon them."
That morning in Denver, the conversation, the language of these writers had an impact upon me. I began reading Wild on the flight home, and soon added Houston's and Benaron's voices to the mix, weaving a pattern--an arc of ARCs--that I am now sorry to see coming to an end as I reach the final pages of three excellent books.
How do we decide which ARC to read next? Sometimes that decision is made for us and it turns out just fine.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
