SVEN BIRKERTS, GARY PHILLIPS, and JULIE CLINE
Image © Lisa Jane Persky for Los Angeles Review of Books“The Ghost of Books: Past, Future, and Present” is an experiment not in terror and is not necessarily Dickensian. We’ve asked certain writers to respond to the three times (or tenses) in the subtitle, or simply to the title.
In “The Ghost of Books Past,” we learn what a handful of writers were reading as children: first books, books that shaped them, books they couldn’t shake. We learn, too, some regrets about books not read, books they maybe pretended to have read, books loved and later forgotten.
“The Ghost of Books Future” will tell us about forthcoming titles some eagerly await.
Which leaves us with “The Ghost of Books Present,” where we learn what certain folks are currently reading, and what they plan, and do not plan, to give as gifts.
Today, brief pieces by Sven Birkerts, Gary Phillips, and Julie Cline.
Throughout the week, responses from Ben Ehrenreich, Stephen Elliott, Matthew Specktor, Mary Otis, Ayelet Waldman, Meghan Daum, Sesshu Foster, Laila Lalami, Ben Loory, Casey Walker, Jane Smiley, Mark Haskell Smith, Morgan MacGregor, Cullen Gallagher, Chris Kraus, Jennifer Egan, Padgett Powell, Antoine Wilson, and Matt Weiland.
I still have the book on my shelf; it’s a green hardback with a reasonably wide black band on the right side of the front cover, paralleling a similar stripe on its back cover. The book is a collection of short stories, Stories From the Twilight Zone, and are prose versions of the teleplays Rod Serling wrote for his sci-fi, morality tales anthology TV show, the Twilight Zone. I was eight or nine and my Uncle Sammy’s girlfriend, “Aunt” Virginia, gave me the book for Christmas along with the collected Sherlock Holmes and the collected Edgar Allan Poe.
