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Irish author-critic McCarthy details love of novels, poems
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Q: What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
The best book I’ve read recently is a collection of poems, “The Hotel Oneira,” by American poet August Kleinzahler. Kleinzahler writes about the loneliness of modern life, about human isolation and urban rootlessness, about lost love and broken families. His world is very contemporary, honest and desolate.
Q: What books do you find yourself returning to again and again?
I find myself returning to the “Collected Poems” of WB Yeats, George Seferis and CP Cavafy. I also find myself returning to three novels, “Doctor Zhivago,” “The Charterhouse of Parma” and “The Leopard.” These books are the pillars of my life. ... I think I would become ill if I couldn’t reach for these books regularly.
Q: Who is your favorite novelist of all time? What do you like about him or her?
My favorite novelist of all time is James Joyce. Joyce only wrote masterpieces. His novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is a magnificent coming-of-age novel, with a main character, Stephen Dedalus, that every new writer, whether European or Chinese, can understand and feel familiar with.
Q: What kinds of books do you avoid?
I don’t read biographies of “celebrities” or sports books, although I love sport. But I steer clear off anything to do with popular entertainers; I find books by such people absolutely insufferable.
Q: What kind of reader were you as a child? What is your favorite children's book?
When I was a boy of 7 to 12 years old I read mainly science books, books about chemistry, physics, astronomy and biographies of famous scientists and engineers. I wanted to be a scientist, and was very good at physics and math. But then I began to write poems at the age of 15 and I lost interest in science. My favorite children’s book was “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Q: Which novel has had the most impact on you as a poet/writer?
“Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak, about a poet who is a medical doctor, set during the Russian Revolution, is still the most influential book in my life.
Q: What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?
I am too old to be embarrassed by books I haven’t read. I am much more embarrassed by the books I should have written. It is a great mistake to think you should read everything. You should not. You should read just enough to feed your soul.
Q: What are you most eagerly anticipating in 2014?
I am eagerly awaiting the publication of “The Letters of Samuel Becket (1959-65),” to be published soon by Cambridge University Press in the UK.
Beckett, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Dublin and wrote in both English and French. His most famous work is the play “Waiting For Godot.” Beckett was a wonderfully attractive person, yet he didn’t like publicity and he hated fame.
When he was told that he’d won the Nobel Prize he said to his wife, ‘What a disaster!’ He fought against the Fascists for the French army during World War II and he won the famous “Croix de Guerre” for bravery, but he only accepted the honor from the French president on condition that it was kept secret. He didn’t want any publicity.
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