In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people.
I would love to have written Roger Zelazny's first five books of 'Amber.' What a great idea he had about the shadings of reality!
One of the most exciting intellectual moments of my career was my 1948 discovery of Knut Wicksell's unknown and untranslated dissertation, 'Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen,' buried in the dusty stacks of Chicago's old Harper Library.
We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them.
I've got a soft spot for Theatr Colwyn because my granddad used to run the Colwyn amateur dramatic society in the 1930s.
I believe that Ryan Murphy is a genius. His instincts remind me of Andy Warhol. I recently went to the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, and you can see a lot of echoes of Andy in Ryan's work. Like Andy, Ryan's finger is so on the pulse of culture that he's ahead of culture. Their aesthetic and their vision of the world are very similar.
It was an incredible resource. I'd sit with a big stack of bound New Yorkers in the library and read through, especially the 'Talk of the Town' sections.
I would see anything by Antony Gormley.
My mentor in college was Stephen Shore. I loved his color palettes and his taking mundane things but finding them fascinating.
Like many science fiction lovers of my generation, I discovered Andre Norton on the shelves at the junior high's library.