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| photo: Lauren Mechling | |
Ben Schrank is president and publisher of Razorbill, a Penguin imprint for children and young adults. Schrank is also the author of the novels Consent and Miracle Man and, now, Love Is a Canoe (Sarah Crichton/FSG, January 8, 2013). In the 1990s, he wrote "Ben's Life," a monthly column for Seventeen magazine. Schrank grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lives with his wife and son.
On your nightstand now:
I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons, Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins, At Last by Edward St. Aubyn (I read the others, I'm saving this one for a desperate evening), The Pale King by David Foster Wallace and The Odds by Stewart O'Nan.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf. I had a crush on the woman in the arena who is half-concealed by her fan. I'm also big fan of Don Freeman. I loved Norman the Doorman. Later I obsessively read Edward Gorey's Amphigorey books.
Your top five authors:
Leonard Michaels, Philip Roth, Laurie Colwin, Alberto Moravia, William Trevor. That's five. I also think a lot about Alice Adams and Roxana Robinson and Donald Antrim and Isaac Babel and Alice Munro. That's five more....
Book you've faked reading:
I won't lie: Harry Potter. I understand that it's popular. I'm not averse to it. I just missed the moment. Then I missed it again.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Memorial by Bruce Wagner. Bruce Wagner is a great mad genius. I think he's as good a writer as William Faulkner. I believe he is the single least appreciated novelist of our time. It's not his fault that he lives in Los Angeles.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy and the rest of the New York Review of Books Classics.
Book that changed your life:
The Wanderers by Richard Price. I read it when I was far too young, when the teenagers in the stories seemed old and wise.
Favorite line from a book:
"And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims?" --from American Pastoral by Philip Roth.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.
What's it like working as a children's book publisher while also writing novels for adults?
Work days in children's publishing are notoriously bunny-eat-bunny, so I get a lot of pleasure from pulling back from that intensity and spending time happily writing novels for adult readers.