“The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Religious hypocrisy in America–it’s all there, and amazingly relevant.
“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. Dagny Taggert is a woman of gigantic ego, purpose and arrogance. She’s Hillary Clinton.
“Mixed Company” by Irwin Shaw. He’s a romantic–I am, too–and I wanted to write nonfiction in the spirit of his short stories.
“Underworld” by Don DeLillo. He writes astonishing scenes. Seagulls hovering over a garbage dump–you can see the seagulls, smell the garbage. The pieces of shoes: poetry. T. S. Eliot couldn’t do it better.
“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the writer who most influenced my life. “Gatsby” instilled in me a mistrust of the rich–especially in Long Island.
– A classic that, on rereading, was disappointing:“Ideal Marriage” by Dr. Th. H. Van De Velde. A marriage manual. I stole it from my mother’s shelf. It was a turn-on when I was 14. It’s not a turn-on at 74.
– The book you care most about having your children read: My own memoir, “A Writer’s Life” –because I want them to know me as I see myself.
