"My father, as he lay dying, was astounded when I told him that I was writing a memoir, with its claims to the tradition of a Bildungsroman, and perhaps he was right to be skeptical."
That's a trip through the mind of an egotistical reporter in the novel, The Columnist. In that satirical book, novelist Jeffrey Frank deftly tangles literary allusions and dangerous rationalizations in his narrator's head.
Frank is a senior editor at The New Yorker magazine and has worked as a journalist at The Washington Post. His most recent work, Trudy Hopedale, is another satire set just months before September 11, 2001--a bittersweet reminder of how much our lives have changed since that relatively carefree time.
Today Frank delivers a great big reading list for your weekend, sharing the influences that fed his characters.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog:
Who are the writers and books that inspire your fiction? On the non-fiction side of your life, which books, magazines, or websites should aspiring journalists be reading right now in order to write better journalism?
Jeffrey Frank:
That's a very tough question, because I read a lot—and have read a lot since I learned to read. Continue reading...
My parents knew James T. Farrell's brother (he was a doctor or something) and for some reason, when I was about twelve, I read "Jim's" most famous novels—Studs Lonigan and the Danny O'Neill books. That's when I learned that nothing was off limits in fiction, and I stopped using the children's section of the library.
I love Fitzgerald and Philip Roth and Trollope, and early Knut Hamsun ("Hunger" and "Pan" and "Mysteries") and Waugh, among others; but those are just the first names that came to mind today.
I occasionally like reading crime fiction by people like Peter Abrahams, who keep teaching me about narrative. If a book is easy to put down, you generally don't finish it—I really believe that a story needs to be propelled even if there isn't much of a story,
As for the other, I'd say journalists should just follow their interests—and their guilty pleasures. I read The New York Review of Books and Gawker—I guess that's the range.
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