My earliest reading memory
I remember coming back from the West Vancouver library, eight years old, with a stack of books from the Choose Your Own Adventure series and not knowing which to read first because they all looked so exciting.
The book that changed me as a teenager
At 14 or 15 I read Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck and was sideswiped by the realisation that all these characters and goings-on came not from the author’s life but his imagination. Fiction was fiction, in other words – something I already understood intellectually but hadn’t grasped emotionally, and I was disappointed by the thought that most novels were largely invention. But then I started writing, and the epiphany took on a rosy glow, because it meant I could speak of anything under the sun.
The book that made me want to be a writer
I read Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream in high school and found them thrilling in form and in their representation of human degradation. My father took me to see a reading by Selby at a place called Largo in Los Angeles. I was expecting a wild man with foam at the mouth and needles dangling from his neck but here was this frail, erudite gentleman. He exuded a strange mix of tenderness and power, and his presence deepened my appreciation of his work. He seemed to be in possession of a great, joyful secret, which I instinctively linked to the fact of his being a writer.
The book I could never read again
In the same way that most of the music from my youth doesn’t move me any more, the Beats, in general, no longer do much for me. A lot of it feels very slapdash and first-thought-best-thought.
The author I discovered later in life
I finally got around to Joan Didion, and I’m the last person on earth to realise it, but her essays are the absolute best.
The book I am currently reading
Two books, one novel, one memoir: Mrs Eckdorf in O’Neill’s Hotel by William Trevor and Easily Slip Into Another World by Henry Threadgill. I’m at the midpoint with each: Mrs Eckdorf, in Dublin, has just brained the pimp named Morrissey with a castle-shaped paperweight; and Mr Threadgill has just returned to the US after his tour of Vietnam, wondering how best to pick up where he left off before the rude military interruption.
My comfort read
The poems of Frank O’Hara are good in moments of crisis. Poetry in general, really. It forces a slow read, cautious and wondering, waiting for the moment when a poem suddenly becomes itself: “I’m sitting all night / I didn’t buy a pillow / My watch got broken last week / I’ve not done much / I’ve loved too little / And I’m tired of running.” O’Hara is just good company.
• The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt is published by Bloomsbury. To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
