that one? AK: No, I hadn’t heard of it. DC: It’s good. Oh, the other book I really want to recommend is the newer one by Chris Ware called Lint. It’s his newest graphic novel, and it’s amazing. Probably his best. JD: I know we’ve been talking about stuff that’s new, and I feel like in MFA programs, there’s an anxiety—maybe tension is better—between the idea that students should be reading the titans, or they should be reading everything new they can get their hands on. Do you feel as a reader that’s a tension for you? DC: It is to some extent, because I do have some big blind spots, but I try to go back and forth. I think the majority of my interests is in at looking at what’s new because I want to be part of my own time. I’m curious about it. And I’m excited about it. But at the same time, I think every second or third book I read is something old that I either want to go back to, or that I’m particularly interested in for some reason. Right now I’m reading a lot of Nancy Hale, who is a sort of forgotten short story writer of the 20th century, because I’m working on a introduction to a reissue of one of her books. So I’m reading a lot of that, and she’s really great. There are also certain writers I’ll go back to because I love them so much, like Dickens. There was a recent new audio of Bleak House that I listened to and thought was great. I think you can do both, and I also think you’re not going to live long enough to read everything that you want to, so just stop feeling guilty and try to read what gives you the most pleasure and what you feel is the most helpful to you. If there are hipsters at a party who are looking down their nose at you because you haven’t read all of Proust, you can just pee on their shoes. AK: So you know my pet topic: that piece you wrote for The Review Review on “What Writers Can Learn From Rock Stars.” I love that piece. I think it’s perfect. I share it around on the regular. But I wonder: what do you think we can do it about it? This dovetails a little on what Jon was just asking. The writers who do read often have such strict self-imposed limits, and I’ve known professors who encourage students not to read anything after, say, 1950, for fear it might influence them! But the ones who just aren’t reading… what, if anything, can we do about it?
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