The charming novelist Michael Arditti kindly offered to answer a few questions for Shelf Life, the new feature where we ask literary people impertinent questions about their reading habits. He also posed for a photo in a rather debonair fashion on his sedan chair with his bookshelf in the background. He mentioned that he does — and always has done — most of his work in bed. That explains answer number six then.
1) What are you reading at the moment?
Jeanette Winterson’s memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?
3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
Too many to list, but Joseph Roth’s Job
springs to mind.
4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
Remembrance of Things Past, not only the greatest novel I’ve ever read but one which would fill my cell with fascinating and incomparable characters. One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich to ward off despair. Don Quixote which, to my shame, I have never read.
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
Winnie the Pooh
6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
‘How To Eat Biscuits In Bed’
7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
L P Hartley’s Eustace and Hilda
trilogy; Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good;
Christopher Logue’s War Music
8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
The Capulets’ ball in Romeo and Juliet
9) What would you title your memoirs?
‘Never Knowingly Undersold’
10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
Prince Myshkin
11) Which book would you give to a lover?
Donne’s Songs and Sonnets
12) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary dealbreaker?
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
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