Still more surprises

Pamela Paul's collection of her By the Book interviews from The New York Times Book Review was full of unexpected things. Here are a few more.

Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley believes it's sinful to keep books after one has finished reading them

If that is true, I am among the greatest of sinners. I have always believed that almost any book worth reading is worth keeping. But here is how Walter Mosley, author of the Easy Rawlins mysteries, puts it: "I am proud to say that I give away or sell at little or no profit almost all of my books. ... After I have read, reread, and reread a book it seems sinful to keep such a reservoir of fun and knowledge fallow on a shelf. Books are meant to be read, and if I'm not reading them then someone else should get the opportunity."

OK, there are several things about that statement that surprise me. 1) Why is it more "sinful" to keep a book than to sell it for "little or no profit"? 2) How does one sell used books for profit anyway, unless they are rare books or were free in the first place, such as review copes? Perhaps Mosley's name on a book, whether he wrote it not, enhances its value. 3) Isn't pride, such as for giving away books, itself a sin? 4) If Mosley keeps a book long enough to read it three times, doesn't that require keeping a book for a long time? And if a book is worth reading three times, why not a fourth? 5) Most books, if taken care of, will outlive us all. So most will eventually find their way back into circulation. Why hurry the process? 6) Why would it be more sinful for a book to sit on my shelf than somebody else's shelf? All books spend most of their lives on shelves, not in readers' hands.

Sebastian Flyte and Franny Glass as role models?

Certainly Sebastian Flyte from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Franny Glass from J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey are memorable characters from literature, but they are also extremely tortured characters, not the sort I would expect to be literary heroes. Sebastian is tortured by wealth, privilege, his mother's insistence on Catholic conformity, his own homosexuality and his alcoholism. Franny suffers a severe breakdown, whether spiritual or mental, in the two related Salinger stories. Yet Andrew Solomon says he identified with Sebastian in his youth, and Donna Tartt says she identified with Franny Glass when she was in her teens.

Harriet the Spy was a favorite childhood book for Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen

None of the women interviewed mentioned Harriet as a childhood literary hero, but Chabon and Franzen did. Yet I was interested whenever certain children's books received multiple mentions, demonstrating the influence such books have had on literary careers. Among those stories future storytellers loved were A Wrinkle in Time (mentioned perhaps more than any others) the Narnia books, Little Women, the Sherlock Holmes stories, Alice in Wonderland and Charlotte's Web. Of course, most children love these books, so perhaps there is no surprise here after all.