1. Who is your favorite author?
With a degree in English Lit, this question is a bit unfair. However, if I pick a number of authors, here is my list:
Twain, Mark
Vonnegut, Kurt
Whitman, Walt
Trillin, Calvin
Murakami, Haraku
Each is deep, humorous and inspiring in their ability to twist a sentence.
2. What is your favorite book/series?
Jasper Fford’s “Thursday Next” series. It is like a child’s book written for adults, taking place in a great world of books.
3. Who is a book hero you most wish to be like?
Ian Fleming’s James Bond. D’uh!
Okay, there is also Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
4. Who is a book character that you envy?
Huck Finn. How can you not admire Finn’s innocence, his outlook on life, his wit and his ability to grow as a person.
5. Which book do you wished you lived in?
Sure it is dirty, smoky and disease ridden, but I have always wanted to live in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian London.
1. Tough question to narrow down. I have to agree with Mark Twain and add Charles Dickens, F. Scott Fitzgerald and in my favorite genre of mystery and suspense (getting killing tips), Jonathan Kellerman.
2. There is always Harry Potter (but I’m a teacher, I have to say that), but I agree with the Thursday Next series and have to add Phillip Pullman’s Dark Works.
3. Eve Dallas from some mysteries I have read. She is tough, smart, beautiful, and married to a gazillionaire. No worries about living on a cop’s salary there.
4. See number 3. I would really like to be married to a gazillionaire.
5. Victorian England seems like it would be very cold, I think the Great Gatsby would be fun, speakeasies, the Charleston, flappers not to mention living on Long Island. Who could beat that??
1. Who is your favorite author?
well, that would be Hunter Thompson. In addition, Herman Hesse, Henry Miller, Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. It would appear ‘H’s are rather important to me. Also, Dave Barry. I mention him because I have read about ten or fifteen of his books, and I just got to meet him TONIGHT. It was rad. he spoke and answered questions. He signed my book and took a pic with me. It was rad. We are very close now.
2. What is your favorite book/series?
Alice in Wonderland. The greatest tale ever told. In college, I carried it with me everywhere I went in my backpack. I did a presentation and a term paper on it. I am serious. I could talk for hours about the book, the author, everything. You know how that book is famous for psychedelic imagery, right? You know Jefferson Airplane used the book’s images to tell the tale of general skullfuckery on lsd, right? Know when that book was written? 1865. Yeah, civil war era. Know who it was written by? A mathematician preacher who was so embarrassed about it he used a pseudonym.
what does one do in church sitting in the math library in 1865 that ones mind drifts to ginormous hookah smoking catepillars chilling out on mushrooms? Man, maybe the old time days weren’t as square as we thought. Supposedly, back in that era, writers were drinking gobs of Absinthe and tripping balls. I have had it, the real stuff. It tastes like ass, and is just alcohol distilled with even nastier wormwood. It’s available everywhere outside of America. It’s super easy to identify, because it is bright green like anti-freeze. I actually have some in the liquor cabinet. It’s vile shit.
God, I really love that book. To be fair, it is two books. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland†and “Through the Looking Glassâ€, though they are usually packaged together. Did you know that the latter book is actually a playable chess game? Yeah, it is. Carroll (Charles Dodgson, a mathematician remember) was nuts about puzzles. Oh, and lastly… there really was an Alice. It was a real life little girl he wrote about the book to and for. Yes, it is super creepy. Her name was Alice Liddell, and she was the daughter of a fellow church dude.
3. Who is a book hero you most wish to be like?
Alice, of the aforementioned tale. Why? Well, it’s the reason why I am nuts for that story. It’s how she handles everything that comes her way. She never freaks out. She eats a piece of cake and grows 100 fold her size. Her response: that’s curious. She comes upon a Walrus and a Carpenter wolfing down oysters (all the poems in Alice involve sea fowl). The two are discussing their accomplishments and Alice gives them a dressing down for their eating of their fellow creatures. When I see a talking Walrus, I don’t discuss semantics with them. I giggle, and then dial back on the psychedelics. Election season is here. Know what a caucus race is? According to Carroll, it is rodents running in a circle trying to dry off. Now you know.
4. Who is a book character that you envy?
well, again that would be Alice, but you probably want to know more. I have a literature degree, so I can get wordy on these topics. So, another character/ writer I admire is Jack Kerouac. In his books, he is the great vagabond. This bold charmer who travels the country popping pills, nailing girls, and making short talk with the most influential minds of his generation (his posse was Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William S Burroughs… you get the idea) and put the whole adventure down to paper.
I read most of his books in late high school and early college. A perfect time for that type of reading. So romantic and free of the bonds of expectations and all that other grown up stuff we were dreading as we grew up. Real story? less romantic. Though, those were his friends and those were his words… the real Kerouac is somewhat less romantic. He lived his whole life with his mother and died of alcoholism at like 40. Really, the reality of the tale is much less romantic than the story. I know you read ‘On the Road’ in college and got super high. Do yourself one better, read “Desolation Angelsâ€.
5. Which book do you wished you lived in?
That is a toss up between Hemingway and Kerouac. Both lives of total and complete self indulgence and narcissism and joy and spontaneity. Hemingway is in Spain in the 30s and 40’s getting drunk every day, and re-inventing literature as he did it. Did you know Hemingway served in both WW1 and WW2? Yeah! He was a medic. Dude really did live a thousand lives somehow. Then, he killed himself on his ranch in Idaho. I have read, though it isn’t commonly circulated, that he had terminal cancer. He knew he was going to die and suffer horribly. So, he snuck off into a field out in Ketchum, Idaho (literally famous only for this thing) and did the deed with a shotgun.
Don’t worry dear reader. When I am finally acknowledged for my greatness, I will not off myself with a shotgun. Why? I am too cowardly and that would hurt like a bitch. Plus, I am a Democrat. Where the hell am I going to get a gun?
* another great point about this set of questions tonight (which I swear I did not make up). Because I am such a nut for great and unconventional literature, I am launching a site very soon. It will be called Renegade Literature. It will rock your face off.
1.) Kurt Vonnegut.
2.) The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis.
3.) Harrison Bergeron.
4.) The Father in Cormac McCarthey’s The Road.
5.) The world of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
1)Roald Dahl
2)Tolkien’s Lord Of the Rings.
3)Dirk Pitt from Clive Cusslers books
4)Tyler Durden
5)Any of the Harry Potter books. Innocence and determination can win the hearts of ladies and run the world.
1. F Scott Fitzgerald or Frederick Exley. The two authors who have closest, thus far, to crafting the Great American Novel.
2. Aside from the Bible? I’d go with Dr. Seuss series.
3. Gatsby. Sure he died alone, but he had a pretty good run there for a while.
4. Pop from “Hop on Pop.”
5. The Bible. Ah, to stone disobedient children. That’d be dreamy.