What books are on your night stand? Actually, it’s a footstool by my rocking/reading chair. Bit by bit, I’ve been reading Bobby Kennedy, by Larry Tye and Maine’s Golden Road, John Gould’s memoir about annual summer retreats in the Great Northen Maine wilderness. Over on the table across the room, are Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poems, This Day; often I read a few to start my Sunday.
Who is your favorite novelist of all time? Probably Flannery O’Connor. Wise Blood (1952), and The Violent Bear It Away (1960) showed that deep Christian commitment is no barrier to creative writing, indeed, it drives the best. Her letters (The Habit of Being, 1979) and her A Prayer Journal (2013) reveal the person who did the writing.
Who are your favorite writers working today? Wendell Berry, for fiction and poetry; Jeanne Murray Walker—Helping the Morning—for poetry; Marilynne Robinson for cultural comment; Jamie Smith on the competing loves in our world; Tom Wright for seeing the big picture in the biblical story; and Richard Hays for interpretive strategies.
What genres do you especially enjoy reading? I re-read three of Berry’s Port William novels this summer: The Memory of Old Jack, Jayber Crow, and Hannah Coulter. His Port William community in Kentucky takes me back to high school days in a hill farm community in Vermont. There’s more than nostalgia here, because Berry has tapped into the biblical motif of responsible care for the earth and its creatures; and the role of inter-generational families and the wider community in this caring.
Tell us about your favorite poetry books and short stories. For poetry, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wendell Berry and Jeannie Walker. Short story collections by Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories; Wendell Berry, That Distant Land and A Place in Time; and William Trevor, A Bit on the Side and Cheating at Canasta.
You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited? I’d like to see John Calvin and Marilynne Robinson at the same table (since she quotes him from time to time), along with perhaps my friend Gordon Lathrop, a Lutheran writer. A potpourri of wit and dialog across the centuries.
What do you plan to read next? I’ve just begun Saving Images, by Lathrop and Awaiting the King, by Jamie Smith; so add those to the footstool. —Larry Sibley
