Nightstand Reads: Stewart O’Nan shares his reading list

 A review in the Washington Post of The Odds started with this: “Stewart O’Nan seems incapable of writing a false line” and later said “O’Nan is an author you learn to trust, no matter what he’s writing about.”  Many of our librarians and readers feel the exact same way, and that’s why we’re thrilled to have Stewart O’Nan at the Central Library next Monday, AND writing as a guest blogger for us. Here is Stewart O’Nan, telling us about what he’s been reading:

My reading these days comes from the past, the present, the future, and a future that may never be.

I’m a big re-reader, going back to favorite books that make me want to write, and recently I had the painful pleasure of revisiting Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes. I expected it to be dated, but it’s utterly prescient. There’s no better book—a Fictional Memoir, it’s subtitled—about fame, failure and anonymity in America.

Digging further back into the past, I ripped through all of Raymond Chandler, and while his work was dated to begin with, I finished his last, not-so-good novel Playback with regret that I was done with him for a while, and a new understanding of how much of our written and filmed entertainment owes a tremendous debt to his irresistible yet finally inimitable style. (I’d say the same of George A. Romero. How many RPGs are essentially Night of the Living Dead?)

From the present, I devoured Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, a neo-western in the footsteps of Ron Hansen, Charles Portis and Cormac McCarthy. I’d say that’s good company—and it is—but DeWitt outdoes them with his choice of a moony, sentimental gunslinger for a narrator. It’s weirdly tender and wistful, even as the bullets fly.

I’m also a subscriber to One Story, run by Hannah Tinti. 18 times a year I receive a chapbook with a single story by one author, and—here’s the great thing—no author can publish more than once with them, so it’s always someone new.

Caught between the past and the future is David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King. I’m taking this one slowly, savoring each brilliant set-piece. It sits out, on a table, waiting to be picked up again. I think it’s his most lyrical work, and I like giving it my full attention for half-an-hour here and there.

Several times a week, without fail, the predictable future comes in the form of galleys. Not having a niche myself, I end up with every literary debut, every baseball book, every blue collar novel, every war and horror story, every small-town tragedy, every quiet domestic study—and it’s great. Overwhelming at times, but what’s better than fresh books, delivered to your door, for free? Two I’ve dug lately are Michael Koryta’s supernatural thriller, The Ridge, and Antoine Wilson’s charming portrait of a harmless misfit at 30, Panorama City (coming later in 2012).

I receive as many manuscripts as galleys, and most of these aren’t yet sold, and may never be. This is the future that remains to be seen. Some are from students, some friends of friends, some acquaintances. Some are contest entries. I read them all, hoping to find the same life I find in my favorite books, whether that’s the depth and complexity of Virginia Woolf or the yarn-spinning wonder of Ray Bradbury. I’ve got one waiting for me now in a sky-blue three-ring binder, a YA novel written in the second person by a high school student. I hope it’s good.

Stewart O’Nan will read from his newest novel, The Odds: A Love Story, at the Central Library on Monday, January 30, at 7 p.m.  Check out this wonderful review in the L.A. Times; and don’t miss this NPR review. You’ll find all of O’Nan’s novels, as well as Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season,a book he co-authored with Stephen King, available at the Library.