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| photo: Lucien Knuteson | |
Thomas Kohnstamm's debut novel, the dark comedy Lake City, will be released by Counterpoint January 8, 2019. His memoir, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, was recently chosen as one of Outside magazine's favorite road books and is in development as a feature film at Vice. He lives in the same Seattle house he grew up in, only now with his wife and two children.
On your nightstand now:
I've just started reading The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead for my book club. There are four of us in the book club: one in SF, one in Dallas, one in Panama and me in Seattle. We have drinks and talk about books on Google Hangouts--it's pretty great. I'm about to finish Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation. I appreciate the fact that she doesn't go too far out of her way to make the protagonist sympathetic. I am also reading Vacationland by John Hodgman. He is effortlessly hilarious about many often banal aspects of adulthood, including money and homeownership.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I grew up on Roald Dahl and MAD magazine.
Your top five authors:
This is a hard one for me, but here are some writers whom I really respect and come back to their work. Jonathan Evison. He's a universe away from MFA programs and being precious, over-descriptive or pretentious. His work makes a statement that good stories, even fiction, should be for everyone. Zadie Smith. She's less than a month older than me, which makes me feel bad about myself, but such is life. Junot Díaz, Gary Shteyngart and Jennifer Egan are other favorites.
Book you've faked reading:
I faked reading (or skimmed, at best) a bunch of books from middle school through grad school--like a reasonable percentage of them. I enjoy reading for pleasure but am not good at reading when someone assigns it to me.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I love J.M. Coetzee's clean writing style and have recommended Disgrace as a starting point to a number of friends. I'm also a fan of the publishing industry satire How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. It's kind of an absurd proto-version of Less by Andrew Sean Greer (also highly recommended).
Book you've bought for the cover:
Vacationland by John Hodgman. The minimal cover design meets retro tourist poster vibe hooked me in some subconscious fashion.
Book you hid from your parents:
I collected the comic series Vigilante for a bit when I was about eight to 10 or so, and remember being so shocked by some of the gnarly sexual violence in a later issue that I hid it away from both my parents and myself.
Book that changed your life:
Ask the Dust by John Fante. That book, more than any other, convinced me to aspire to write novels. I've probably reread it more than any other book.
Favorite line from a book:
It's a popular choice but hard to beat for an opener: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." --from One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Five books you'll never part with:
I have a bit of the collector gene. My office is crammed with Kenner Star Wars figures, Garbage Pail Kids, M.U.S.C.L.E. Things, VHS tapes, the Beastmaster posters, classic Adidas, you name it. And I like to keep every book that I've read cover-to-cover and enjoyed. Even seeing the spine of a book in my bookshelf can take me back to the point in life when I read it. After I die, someone is going to get stuck with a big yard sale.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
There are a handful of books that I re-read for inspiration. But, in general, I am focused on getting to even 1% of the stuff that I want to read.
When you read:
One of the great curses and blessings of my life is that I have trouble going to sleep. I frequently feel like crap in the morning, but I also get quite a few hours of quiet time after the rest of my family is asleep--almost every night. My nightstand is out of control. In the earlier "nightstand" question, I think I mentioned about a 10th of the books and magazines and random newspaper sections on my nightstand and the surrounding floor. Fortunately, my wife is a heavy sleeper and doesn't mind if I keep my light on.