Madeleine Watts is an Australian-born writer of fiction, essays and journalism. Her work has been published in the Believer, the White Review, Lithub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Irish Times and elsewhere. Her first novel, The Inland Sea, about coming of age in a dying world, is available now from Catapult. Watts is also a bookseller: she's worked at McNally Jackson in New York City since 2014.
On your nightstand now:
I always have a terrifying number of books on my nightstand. As of this morning there are 13 on the nightstand proper, and nine on the floor by the bed. They're all in various states of completion, but they include essay collections by John Berger (Landscapes), John D'Agata (Halls of Fame) and Jenny Diski (Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told); poetry by Sharon Olds (Stag's Leap) and Eavan Boland (The Historians); Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai; Smiling in Slow Motion, the last volume of Derek Jarman's journals; She Come by It Natural, a book on Dolly Parton by Sarah Smarsh; and some novels: Weather by Jenny Offill, The White Dress by Nathalie Léger and Cabin Fever by Elizabeth Jolley.
Favorite book when you were a child:
As you might be able to deduce from my adult reading habits, I always had many favorites. The ones I remember loving most were When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park. I also loved children's versions of myth and folk tales, and had well-worn copies of Enid Blyton's Tales of Ancient Greece, Stradbroke Dreamtime by Oodgeroo, and the Everyman's Library book of Russian Fairy Tales.
Your top five authors:
Patrick White, Lydia Davis, Joan Didion, Eula Biss and Helen Garner (or at least that's how I feel today).
Book you've faked reading:
I've definitely implied that I've read in their entirety books I haven't finished--foremost among these are Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Children's Bach by Helen Garner, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride, For Love Alone by Christina Stead, Ghosts of My Life by Mark Fisher, Notes from No-Man's Land by Eula Biss and Being Here Is Everything by Marie Darrieussecq--I've been pushing all of these at McNally Jackson for years (although the Christina Stead book is unfortunately out of print).
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Sick Rose or; Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration by Richard Barnett is a beautiful and gruesome book filled with pictures of infected lung tissue and syphilitic limbs. The cover is that of a beautiful girl with blue lips. Thames & Hudson publish several of these gruesome books on medical illustration that I've also bought--one on dentistry and another on the anatomical Venus.
Book you hid from your parents:
My parents were never really bothered about what I was reading, so I don't remember hiding books from my parents so much as I remember hiding that I was reading at all. I did a lot of hiding under the covers with a torch when it was past my bedtime.
Book that changed your life:
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis completely changed how I thought about writing. Ulysses by James Joyce completely rearranged how I thought about language. The Tree of Man by Patrick White made me reconsider how I felt about where I was from.
Favorite line from a book:
I have favorite lines of poetry more often than I have favorite lines from prose. "Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances," is one such line, from Robert Hass's poem "Meditation at Lagunitas."
Five books you'll never part with:
Books of sentimental value! My grandmother's copy of Patrick White: A Life by David Marr. A first edition of Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, bought on a day walking around Manhattan with my friend Landon. A copy of Wuthering Heights, inscribed to me with a note from Patti Smith. A Day in the Life of Rowland S Howard by Peter Milne, a photo book I received as a birthday present from my friends Madelaine and Rob. My grandfather's high school copy of The Tempest, his childhood address inked onto the title page, and marked with my mother's high school bus pass.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald and Modern Nature by Derek Jarman. Both books were complete revelations to me. I regularly return to some books, like Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene and Bluets by Maggie Nelson, because each time I find something so new and wonderful it feels like it's the first time all over again.