A Life in Fiction

John Wilson on the books that stick with us.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Around a year and a half ago, I devoted a column to “What’s New—and Not So New—in Spy Fiction.” Two of the writers I mentioned there have new books that would be worth your time if (like me) you are a fan of the genre.

Dan Fesperman, author of more than a dozen novels, is sui generis. I can’t think of anyone else in the field whose books have been so varied while always delivering the goods. His latest, Pariah, coming next week, is no exception. (I hope to write about it for someone!) Then there is David McCloskey, whose fourth novel, The Persian, is coming at the end of September. Still young, McCloskey has already established himself as one of the finest spy-writers at large, and his new book (all too timely) is terrific; I’ll be reviewing it for the blessed Washington Free Beacon.

My chief objective in this column, though, is to propose a nonfiction book series, by a wide variety of writers, on novels (or short stories) that in one way or another made a particularly strong impression, beginning with those in childhood and proceeding (more or less) to the present. The individual volumes in the series would not be long, but they would not be short either; writers would enjoy a degree of leeway on that front. Similarly, there would be no presumption that each volume would offer a personal selection of “Great Books,” but neither would such titles be proscribed.

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Some of you may be scratching your heads, thinking how preposterously ill-timed such a venture would be. Aren’t we hearing, ad nauseum, from every hand, that fewer and fewer people are reading any fiction at all? Maybe that’s true, though you wouldn’t guess it after spending some time with our seven grandkids (Catholic, home-schooled), the eldest of whom recently completed her first year at Christendom College in Virginia (which she loves). But never mind. This series would be worth doing: a small good thing (maybe even “very good”).

Example: One book in the series might begin with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, then take up the cases of Sherlock Holmes, followed by The Arabian Nights in an old and gloriously illustrated library edition (perhaps intended for “mature” readers but eagerly devoured by a boy of twelve). Next to Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File (read at age fifteen) and so on, all the way to our own time, our once-young reader now in his seventies and fascinated by the late work of A. G. Mojtabai (not to mention her early work and everything in between). And somewhere earlier on, following the Arabian Nights, perhaps, there would have to be a novel or two encountered via Reader’s Digest Condensed Books—Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, say.

As you may have guessed, that example of how a book in the series might proceed is drawn from my own reading history, from which I could (with equal fidelity) easily select different scenarios. One might include (around age ten for our reader) the discovery of Robert Heinlein’s “juveniles” (some of his best work, in fact); another sci-fi favorite at this time was Andre Norton, a man, obviously, with a dashing name—but the card catalogue, a technology our young reader loved, told him that this was a pseudonym for a woman (a good lesson). In this volume in our series, the writer would recount how, around the age of fifteen, he suddenly lost interest in science fiction (practically over night!), couldn’t read the stuff, and so on—until, around the age of thirty, he discovered Philip K. Dick for the first time (a rapturous find) and was back in the fold.

You get the idea. Each book in the series would tell a different story, and they all would tell the same story. The books (so I think) would be fun to write and fun to read. We would want a first-class designer to create a look for the series (just thinking about that makes me happy). Why couldn’t this happen?

If you were to write a (selective) history of your life in fiction, which books would you include?

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