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By the Book

David Grann: By the Book

David GrannCredit...Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

The author of “The Lost City of Z” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” thinks the president should read “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy, because “it gives a sense of the fragility of the world.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

My night stand is more like a geological structure: a bunch of books piled on the floor with its own strata. At the top layer are the newly accumulated books. Among the most recent additions are T. C. Boyle’s “The Terranauts,” Zadie Smith’s “Swing Time” and Tana French’s “The Trespasser.” Then comes the layer of books further down, which, for a long time, I’ve been planning to read but have not yet had a chance — though I vow to! These include Renata Adler’s “Speedboat,” Marlon James’s “A Brief History of Seven Killings” and Norman Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost.” Finally, there are the books scattered about that I’m continually excavating to look at again for inspiration, such as James Baldwin’s “Collected Essays”; Saul Bellow’s “Seize the Day”; Willa Cather’s “My Ántonia”; Flannery O’Connor’s “The Complete Stories”; George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia”; and St. Clair McKelway’s “Reporting at Wit’s End.” The pile is constantly shifting and resettling and, on occasion, toppling.

What’s the last great book you read?

Without question “The North Water,” by Ian McGuire. It’s like some weird channeling of Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy, and yet remains its own original work. Even though I’m a slow reader, I read it in two days.

What’s the best classic novel you recently read for the first time?

I have lots of gaps in my education, and so I’m often picking up classic books that most people read years ago. I recently read Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” for the first time. In truth, I was assigned the book in high school but didn’t understand a word of it. So I picked it up again and was shocked by how accessible and funny it is, and how devilishly it subverts my favorite genre of fiction, the detective novel. Not long ago I also read “Victory,” by Joseph Conrad, after discovering that it was one of Joan Didion’s favorite books. The novel — which is about a man who has spent his life trying to isolate himself from the complications of the world, only to be drawn into its evil — is not without imperfections, but it’s one of the best depictions I’ve read of how humans succumb to a fatal mix of illusions and deceptions.

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?

I’m not well enough read to have a book that no one else has heard of. But an author who deserves wider recognition is John Joseph Mathews, the prose-poet of the Osage Indians, who died in 1979. His books, including his 1934 semi-autobiographical novel, “Sundown,” capture what life was like on the Oklahoma prairie and the traumatic clash between white settlers and Native Americans. He is an exquisite stylist. Everyone should read him.

Which writers — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets — working today do you admire most?

Too many to list, but here’s a start: T. C. Boyle, Robert Caro, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Don DeLillo, Joan Didion, Louise Erdrich, Denis Johnson, Jon Krakauer, Erik Larson, Janet Malcolm, Steven Millhauser, Candice Millard, Cynthia Ozick, Ann Patchett, Richard Price, Ron Rosenbaum, Philip Roth (even if he’s no longer writing), Hampton Sides and Colson Whitehead. I’ve also been fortunate to be able to work at The New Yorker, where I admire so many of my colleagues. And I have enormous admiration for newspaper reporters like David A. Fahrenthold and Maggie Haberman who are doing a public service by holding our government officials accountable.

What’s the last book to make you laugh?

The author who consistently makes me laugh is Elmore Leonard, who had a perfect ear for American vernacular and who believed, as he put it, “the bad guys are the fun guys.” The book that most recently made me laugh, though, was Junot Díaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” The book had been buried in my night stand pile for ages, until last year I finally pulled it out and read it. Not only are the scenes funny; the play of words in each sentence made me laugh. And like the best comic novels, it is really a tragedy.

The last to make you cry?

I don’t cry too often reading books, but I did reading Francisco Goldman’s autobiographical novel, “Say Her Name.” Like the author, the protagonist in the book loses his wife during a freakish accident while body surfing in Mexico. Though many books wrestle with guilt and grief and memory, Goldman explores these themes with unflinching honesty and emotional truth.

The last book that made you furious?

David Wyman’s “The Abandonment of the Jews,” which meticulously describes how the United States and other countries failed to pursue policies, including more open immigration, that could have saved countless people from extermination during the Holocaust.

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

Because I read so much nonfiction for work, I enjoy fiction most, especially detective novels and mysteries that keep me awake at night. I’ll read anything by Megan Abbott, Eric Ambler, Kate Atkinson, Michael Connelly, John Grisham and Dashiell Hammett. I don’t instinctively pick up science fiction, but if it’s well written I can easily be swept away.

How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or simultaneously? Morning or night?

My mom was a publisher, and I grew up in a house full of hardcover books that still had the smell of freshly printed paper, and to this day I love to collect first editions by authors I admire. Yet I now have rather poor eyesight, and reading electronically — and being able to triple the font size — has been a modern wonder. As for my reading habits, they’re rather strange and inexplicable. I won’t read two novels at the same time, or two nonfiction books at the same time. It feels like a betrayal. However, I will often read one nonfiction book and one novel during the same period — though I usually read the former during the day and the latter during the night.

How do you organize your books?

Disastrously. And as my house has filled with children and pets and their accouterments I’ve had to start storing books in boxes in my basement, and sometimes even in the garage, where they have acquired a rather foul odor.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

The only really surprising stuff comes from my research: books on the hunt for the giant squid, or hangings in the Old West, or what it’s like to be eaten by maggots in the jungle.

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

The Eitingons: A Twentieth-Century Story,” by Mary-Kay Wilmers, which my mother gave me. Wilmers, who is the editor of The London Review of Books, is a distant relative and delved deeply into the gothic history of our family, which included a member of Sigmund Freud’s inner circle and apparently a notorious K.G.B. assassin.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

My favorite fictional hero is Dr. Watson, because unlike Sherlock Holmes, he bumbles through life like the rest of us; my favorite villain is the pig Napoleon in “Animal Farm,” who embodies the evil of absolute political power.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I didn’t become much of a reader until junior high, when I discovered the novels by S. E. Hinton. I raced through them, then stumbled upon Robert Cormier’s “I Am the Cheese,” which has a twist at the end that still haunts me. Many of the books that were assigned in class — “A Separate Peace,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” “Their Eyes Were Watching God” — all still stick with me, perhaps because I was more impressionable then or perhaps because my memory was still firing on all cylinders.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” It gives a sense of the fragility of the world. Plus, each sentence is very short — about the length of a tweet.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I’ll go with Thomas Pynchon, because I can dine on that for the rest of my life; Ambrose Bierce, because I can then solve the riddle of his death; and Margot Livesey, who is a wonderful novelist and the best writing teacher I ever had.

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

There was a time in my life when, if I started a book, I was determined to finish it. I still remember my misery getting to the end of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.” In recent years, I’ve become more coldhearted and will often quickly ditch a book I don’t like — yet I’m not so coldhearted to name names.

Whom would you want to write your bio?

Janet Malcolm once compared the biographer to a “professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away.” So I’m going to lock the doors and keep away anyone who wants to write my life story.

What do you plan to read next?

Well, I was planning on finally tackling Mailer’s tome “Harlot’s Ghost,” but thankfully my 10-year-old daughter, Ella, gave me a reprieve and picked my next book: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which we plan to read together.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Page 7 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: David Grann. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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