Lev Grossman is the author of the novels, The Magicians, Codex, and Warp.
–Name a childhood hero.
I only ever had one childhood hero, and that was James Bond.
–Name a work you wished you’d written.
“Arcadia,” by Tom Stoppard.
–If you had to order your work by how successfully you completed what you set out to accomplish, what would that list look like?
In descending order of successfulness (and also, not coincidentally, reverse chronological order): The Magicians, Codex, Warp.
–Name a writer in history you would’ve like to have been a contemporary of and why.
Flann O’Brien. Because he seems like a nice guy. And so there would always be someone drunker than me at the writer’s conference.
–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.
A few weeks ago I wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal called (not my headline) “Good Novels Don’t Have to Be Hard Work.” Holy crow, did the reception of that article surprise me. It was just some thoughts about the state of the contemporary novel. I had people calling me an asshole. I had people telling me how brave I was. I had no idea I was an asshole, or brave. I’m pretty sure I’m neither.
–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or less.
Some people think I’m a book reviewer who took up fiction. I’m a fiction writer who took up reviewing to make a living. It just so happened that the reviews got published before the fiction did.
–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.
Boring-ness.
–Name your five desert island films.
Star Wars. Brazil. Ronin. Repo Man. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.
Seriously. Tristram Shandy. Check it out.
–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.
Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.
Warp. I would rewrite it a la Georges Perec, using only one key on my keyboard: DELETE.
–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.
So there was a period in the 1930’s when Joyce was dictating Finnegans Wake to Samuel Beckett, because Joyce had trouble with his eyes, and he liked ordering Beckett around. They’re working away, and somebody knocks on the door, and Joyce says ‘come in.’ Beckett doesn’t hear the knock and dutifully writes ‘come in’ in the manuscript. After the person left, Joyce decided to leave the words ‘come in’ in the book. I don’t think Beckett ever really got over that.
Oh, and Dan Brown and David Foster Wallace were in the same creative writing class at Amherst. And when Robert Lowell was in Mclean’s during one of his mental breakdowns, the nurse assigned to keep him from killing himself was James Patterson.
–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.
I torture myself with fears of failure.
–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.
I wish I’d gone to therapy in my teens, not in my 30s, when it was almost too late.
–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.
The struggle against my own talentlessness.
–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.
“Why the hell does your stuff get published and not mine?”
–Name a question you wish you had been asked.
You’re a professional writer with a sedentary lifestyle and a fondness for alcohol. How do you stay in such amazing physical shape?