![]() Granted, as with fiction, most of what I read is an old friend – Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert (George, Zbigniew), Whitman, Dickinson, Hopkins, Eliot, Berryman, Geoffrey Hill and so on. ![]() (Recent exceptions include Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses and Richard Bausch’s Peace.) I’m no longer reluctant to give up on a mediocre book after five or 10 pages, or even one, but I’m less likely than ever to even start a book by a writer new to me. When I read fiction, most often I’m rereading writers deeply familiar to me – Chekhov, Joyce, Flannery O’Connor, Henry James, Bellow, Christina Stead, William Maxwell. What happened?Īge, of course, is part of it. If a comparably gifted fiction writer appeared today, I probably would miss him, and yet I feel no compulsion to look for the next McHale. McHale committed suicide in 1982 and his reputation is largely eclipsed, but he was a superbly funny writer, somewhat in the school of Evelyn Waugh. Does anyone remember Tom McHale? I read and admired Principato (1970) and Farragan’s Retreat (1972) as they were published. Is there something about fiction that specifically attracts adolescents and young adults? Roughly 35 years ago I read almost nothing but novels, current titles and what is now dismissed as the canon. I no longer read newspapers though I spent much of my life working for them. ![]() Without realizing it, my reading habits have evolved dramatically over the decades. ![]() I read more poetry than prose, and more nonfiction than fiction, and this comes as a surprise. ![]()
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