Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Susanna Moore

Susanna Moore is the author of the novels The Big Girls, One Last Look, In the Cut, Sleeping Beauties, The Whiteness of Bones, and My Old Sweetheart, and two books of nonfiction, Light Years: A Girlhood in Hawai’i and I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai’i.

Her new novel is The Life of Objects.

A few weeks ago I asked Moore what she was reading.  Her reply:
I am reading books for a freshman seminar that I teach at Princeton: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, White Noise by Don De Lillo, and a collection of Grimms' fairy tales. The class is called "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Wisdom of Crowds," which is a twist on the 19th century book by Charles Mackay called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. I am interested in the way that rumors, folk tales and even fiction reflect, mutatis mutandis, whatever is troubling us in our culture.

When I finish teaching in December, I am going to read Richard Ford's Canada, then a strange and lovely novel about a young American girl in early 20th century Japan, The Ginger Tree, written by Oswald Wynd, and Sharon Olds' new book of poetry.
Visit Susanna Moore's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Life of Objects.

--Marshal Zeringue