The author on his friendship with Gene Wolfe, crying over Diana Wynne Jones and falling under the spell of CS Lewis The book I am currently reading _The Invention of Jane Harrison_ by Mary Beard. I’m fascinated by Hope Mirrlees, and her relationship with Jane Harrison was one of the ingredients of her life. They collaborated on a book of translated Russian tales, and Harrison’s theories seem integral both to Paris, Mirrlees’s modernist poem and to _Lud-in-the-Mist_. I’m loving watching Mary Beard deconstruct and re-examine ideas about what biography is in this short but brilliant book. Also _Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths _by Natalie Haynes. I’m reading it slowly and with delight, an essay at a time, rejoicing in the easy erudition and the way she upends what I thought I knew and gives me something much more interesting in its place. The book that changed my life The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. It’s brilliant, much more brilliant than I knew when I read it for the first time. I would not be the writer I am without Wolfe’s friendship, or without taking his lesson that you should write to be reread with increased pleasure by a smart reader. Continue reading...
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