Interview
Reading Group Choices - Elizabeth Crook Interview
Elizabeth Crook (The Night Journal
) reveals why she dropped a speed- reading course in college ... In
this month's 1-On-One!
Is it possible to be a good writer without being a good reader?
I hope so. I’m one of those people you see in the airport moving
their lips. I took a speed-reading course in college but was advised
to drop it before it demolished my GPA. So….I select books
carefully. And put them down if I don’t like them. And after years
of bluffing through conversations about books I haven’t read, I’ve
finally come clean and started admitting, “Nope, never read it.”
“Heard of it. Never read it.” “Would love to, but never read it.
Haven’t a clue what it’s about.” I read my first Trollope this year.
Haven’t read any Jane Austen, but will. (Did read The Jane Austin
Book Club, and loved that.) Managed to make my way through most of
the Brontes and quite a few of Dickens’ in high school. The good
news is, when I’ve finished a book, I’ve earned it. It belongs to me
intrinsically. Skimming is out of the question, so every word makes
an impression. Not only have I read it, I’ve basically read it
aloud. Having heard the words as well as seen them, I feel in
touch—if it isn’t too sappy to say so—with the heartbeat of the
book. The rhythm. This, I think, has been a great gift to me as a
writer.
Have you ever belonged to a reading group?
No, but I love talking with reading groups. When I finished writing The Night Journal, I had the queasy feeling of walking away
from characters I’d lived with, and had my morning coffee with, for
ten years. That seemed to be it for them. Fin. Je suis terminé. Vaya
con Dios. But then I discovered that talking with book clubs gave me
another glimpse at these characters. Having spent a decade presiding
over their lives, it’s strangely exhilarating to sit around
discussing their bad habits and choices and redeeming aspects. It
reconnects me with them.
What books are you reading now or do you plan to read?
I’m about to finish Corrections by Johnathan Franzen. Next on
my list are books recently published by some of my friends here in
Austin: Sarah Bird’s Flamenco Academy, Larry Wright’s The
Looming Tower, and Greg Curtis’ The Cave Painters.
Favorite book when you were a child?
My mother read to my brother and sister and me nightly, for hours,
long after we could read for ourselves. It was the best time of our
day and often cantankerous, as you might imagine with three kids of
different ages all relating to stories differently. My mother
usually had a book going for each of us, but we listened in on each
other’s. I especially loved historical stories: Caddie Woodlawn, The Bronze Bow, everything by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Old
Yeller and Savage Sam by Fred Gipson, The Witch of
Blackbird Pond, Roller Skates, Five Little Peppers, Blue
Willow, Little Women, The Colt from Moon Mountain, and Thee,
Hannah. The list could go on forever, but these are the books
that come to mind as my great loves from childhood.
Favorite heroine in literature and why?
That’s hard to say. But recently I did love Lizzie Eustace in The
Eustace Diamonds. She is not admirable, she’s frivolous. But
Trollope exposes her worst qualities with so much humor and tolerant
affection that the reader can’t help but like her. It’s clear that
Trollope does.
Favorite first line from a book?
It’s from Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and it’s actually
several lines. “When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs
were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just
been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs.
They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days
were over. The sow had it by the neck, and the shoat had the tail.
“You pigs git,” Augustus said, kicking the shoat. “Head on down to
the creek if you want to eat that snake.” ……
Words to live by?
My father once gave me an old pewter book-stand with a quotation
hammered into the pewter along the front: “CHOOSE AN AUTHOR AS YOU
CHOOSE A FRIEND.” I keep it by my desk.
The Which Way Tree
Now Available in Paperback
MONDAY, MONDAY
Awarded the 2015 Jesse H. Jones Award for fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters
Named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Fiction Books of 2014
