We’ll 0-fer Have Paris

A few weeks ago, I ran the 0-fer test on the first volume of the new Paris Review Interviews series. Since I’m utterly unimaginative, let’s go check out Volume 2 and see which literary titans I’ve managed to avoid completely!

  • Graham Greene (1953) — I think I tried reading The End of the Affair, because it inspired a good album by the Golden Palominos
  • James Thurber (1955) — I’m sure I read something by him, although nothing leaps to mind
  • William Faulkner (1956) — read three of his novels and some short stories. And I saw Barton Fink
  • Robert Lowell (1961) — 0-fer
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer (1968) — 0-fer
  • Eudora Welty (1972) – 0-fer, but I remember she dated Krusty the Klown once on an episode of The Simpsons
  • John Gardner (1979) — read his Grendel and his adaptation of Gilgamesh
  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1981) — read him
  • Philip Larkin (1982) — read 1 or 2 of his poems, after Grant Morrison referred to him while promoting a Batman comic book
  • James Baldwin (1984) — 0-fer
  • William Gaddis (1987) — I finished two of his novels, gave up on a third, plan to read another one someday, and once called him before I’d started reading his work, because I managed to find his phone number on a database
  • Harold Bloom (1991) — read a bunch of his criticism, own a copy of his novel, The Flight To Lucifer (but haven’t read it or the book it’s a sequel of, David Lindsay’s A Voyage To Arcturus), and also spoke to him on the phone
  • Toni Morrison (1993) — read her; I oughtta go back and see if I still like Song of Solomon
  • Alice Munro (1994) — 0-fer
  • Peter Carey (2006) — 0-fer
  • Stephen King (2006) — I’ve read one article by him that was adapted from On Writing; otherwise, I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never read anything by him

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