By The Book -- NY Times Style Featuring Yours Truly

The Sunday New York Times Book Review has a section each week called, By the Book, which is comprised of a brief author interview. There are series of questions that are chosen from. To date, the Times has not deigned to interview me, so I thought I’d save them the bother by doing it myself here. (You’re welcome, New York Times.) I’ve used some of their standard questions and a typical form of their introduction.

Richard Hourula is the author of Lesson Plan, A Novel, based in part on his experiences as a middle school teacher. His next novel, Threat of Night (Yön Uhka) about a young reporter in Berkeley in 1941 who stumbles upon a group of Nazi spies, will be published early next year.

What books are on your nightstand?
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. Allen Ginsberg’s India Journals. The Benchley Roundup, a collection of Robert Benchley essays. Benjamin Dreyer’s, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.

What’s the last great book you read?
The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Are there are classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?
Stoner by John Williams.

Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose?
No. By definition a great book is well-written. Nothing can overcome bad prose.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
In a comfortable chair on a rainy day in the late afternoon with a great novel, like something by Dickens.

Do you count any books as guilty pleasures? Or comfort reads?
Why would I feel guilty while taking pleasure from a book? I don’t believe pleasures are anything to feel guilty about. As for comfort reads, that would be anything I’m familiar with. Reading a favorite book again.

How do you organize your books?
One side of my book shelf is dedicated to fiction and poetry and the books are separated by author.  The other side of my shelf is a haphazard mix of fiction and non-fiction that I've never gotten around to organizing.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?
A book of the world’s best jokes from the 1930s. My brother gave it to me in the early Seventies and it bears an inscription he wrote. It’s a terribly politically incorrect book filled with “ethnic” humor including a section on “negro jokes.” But I view it as a piece of history and it has sentimental value for me.

What kind of reader were you as a child?
I was a binge reader, voraciously devouring a book or a couple of books in a short span, then not reading for a week or two. Now I read consistently and every day.

Who’s your favorite fictional hero or heroine?
Impossible to choose just one. Eugene Grant from Look Homeward, Angel. Sal Paradise from On the Road. Neil Klugman from Goodbye Columbus. Oh and Sam-I-Am from Green Eggs and Ham.

You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited?
Jack Kerouac, Thomas Wolfe and Charles Dickens. I wish I could invite more so that I’d have a better mix. I’d like to have some female writers such as Shirley Jackson, Jennifer Egan and Sylvia Plath and some African-American writers like James Baldwin, Colson Whitehead and Ta-Nehisi Coates and an African American female, Nikki Giovanni. But I couldn't possibly do without Allen Ginsberg or Ken Kesey.