A new world flavour to Shelf Life this week, as the novelist Sean Thomas Russell joins us from Vancouver. He has been getting to grips with Shakespeare — an attempt, perhaps, to escape the pervasive influence of Bill O’Reilly. His latest novel, A Ship of War, is published in Britain next week.
1) What are you reading at the moment?
Shakespeare After All by Marjorie
Garber. I’ve been on a Shakespeare kick recently. I just finished Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt and A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare:
1599 by James Shapiro. I recommend all three.
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and
Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn. I don’t think kids read these anymore but they are the books that made me decide to become a writer.
3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
I get choked up over a well-written sentence!
4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
The Selected Poems of Tu Fu translated
by David Hinton, Infinite Jest by David
Foster Wallace (because to get through it I’d have to be locked in a small room), and because of my recent reading, the complete works of Shakespeare. That should keep me busy.
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
Anna Karenina. She was intelligent, complex and passionate. She’d likely cheat on me though — it was in her nature.
6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
“Mr Darcy Syndrome”. I’ve known any number of intelligent women who have hooked up with men one could only describe as highly inappropriate and then waited for those men to change out of
love for them. I think Austen tapped into a central romantic myth in Pride and Prejudice. A man who will
completely change his nature to win a woman’s love — that is a love worth having. Unfortunately these men almost never change and the women are made terribly unhappy. The romantic myth men
are susceptible to is “The Damsel in Distress.”
7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which novel, play and poem would you make compulsory reading?
Huckleberry Finn because they are old enough to appreciate it. A Midsummer Night’s Dream because when
you are young you should read the comedies, and sonnet 138; did I mention that I’m on a Shakespeare kick at the moment?
8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
Almost any of the parties Hemmingway wrote about in A Moveable Feast, preferably the one after Morley
Callahan knocked him cold in the boxing ring — it would be nice to see Hemmingway feeling humble, if only for five minutes.
9) What would you title your memoirs?
“I Must Have Blinked.”
10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
Whichever character I’m writing at a given moment.
11) What book would you give to a lover?
I think the book you give to your lover has to be a perfect fit. It has to be the book that you love and yet will speak to them. It has to express some complexity of feeling that you can’t put into
words yourself. Definitely D-Day: The Beginning of the End. Or maybe not.
12) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary dealbreaker?
Any book by Bill O’Reilly, unless it’s entitled, “Bill O’Reilly Explains the Moon and the Tides”. Maybe you aren’t subjected to Mr O’Reilly in England?
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