One of my favorite things in the world is the New York Times Book Review section, which is found each week in the paper's Sunday edition. If you live in Manhattan or certain sections of Brooklyn, you're totally familiar with it because, before the pandemic, anyway, it was a law that you had to go to brunch each Sunday morning and read it in plain sight or you'd get fined for not being cool enough. Three fines and you had to move to Staten Island.
What I enjoy most about the NYTBR is how I've never heard of any of the writers who are reviewed each week. Not one! You have to REALLY be in the writerly loop to know these folks — and I say that with the disclosure that I have a tattoo on my shoulder of Giosuè Carducci, who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Literature. THAT should give you an idea of how upper stratosphere authors in the Review are.
But my favorite feature in the Review is "By the Book." Each week, a different Literary Giant submits her- or himself to a short Q&A about the Authorial Life — reading preferences, pub-biz anecdotes, and whimsical personal minutiae as they pertain to typing and stuff.
Recently, when my wife asked what I wanted for my birthday, I told her, "I want to be featured in 'By the Book.'"
"Oh, honey," she said, patting my shoulder in the slightly nervous but well-intentioned fashion of someone trying to gently nudge a steer up the chute for an appointment with the bolt gun, "I'm not sure they, ah, interview folks like you."
"Why not?" I said. "My brochure on 'Elements of Empiricism in "Dennis the Menace"' won third place last year in the Deep River Cromwellian Pamphleteer Competition's 'Funny Pages' category."
"Aw, I know, Suge. You keep wishing on a star, OK?" Then she went to the cellar to get the bolt gun.
Just in case, I'm providing my answers to two of the most common "By the Book" questions.
1. What books are on your night stand?
Right now I have "SEAL Team Three Meets the Wolf Man" by James Patterson with Michael Chabon; a first edition of Poe's "Tamerlane and Other Poems," which I understand is quite rare and valuable — or it was until it I accidentally washed it along with the overalls I'd worn to roll a rancid whale carcass off Ocean Beach and across the town line into Waterford; Charlotte Brontë's "How to Build a Sturdy Night Stand That Will Hold Dozens of Books"; and "Mediocre" by Ijeoma Oluo, which I bought because Ijeoma Oluo was a recent featured author in "By the Book." So far, I love her style but no one's been murdered yet.
2. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
Well, probably not the guy I borrowed "Tamerlane" from. Let's see ... how about Kazuro Ishiguro? Based on his "Remains of the Day," he can fill in on butler duties if my usual servants don't show up. Edgar Allan Poe (he can bring a fresh first edition of "Tamerlane and Other Poems"). And definitely Nikolai Gogol because almost every "By the Book" interviewee includes a Russian novelist — but they ALWAYS leave this poor dude out. He must be hungry by now.
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January 30, 2021 at 02:19AM
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