This week, Shelf Awareness interviewed James about what he is reading at the moment, some of the books that had the greatest impact on his life, what he read as a child, and books that he had concealed or pretended to have read. Here’s an extract, but the full interview can be found right HERE.
“I’ve been reading The Selected Poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini, edited and translated by Stephen Sartarelli. I’m quite taken with the poems from The Nightingale of the Catholic Church, with lines like “the light rots the sky.” Last night, I finished Oded Galor’s The Journey of Humanity during an appropriately dramatic thunderstorm. Among others I’ve enjoyed lately: James Baldwin’s The Devil Finds Work and Jason McBride’s Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, which I loved. I’m interested in writers who plough a lonely furrow…”