Peter Orner, author of seven previous books and chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College, has just published “The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter.” Orner will be appearing at Chevalier’s Books in Los Angeles at 7 p.m. on Sept. 3 in conversation with Edan Lepucki.
Q. Please tell readers about your new book.
“The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter” is about a friendship between two couples. After many decades, the friendship ends abruptly and irrevocably. Why?
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Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
I often recommend Gina Berriault’s collection of stories, “Women in Their Beds.” I have it right here on my desk. All I’ve got to do is open it and I fall immediately back into Berriault’s seemingly peaceful universe. But there is always a great churning beneath the surface. It opens with a story set in a hospital, some jokesters have hijacked the PA system and are calling out for Dr. Zhivago, Dr. Jekyll … I mean, how could you not go on reading? So Berriault isn’t as well-known as she should be? Who gives a damn? When it comes to short story writers, she’s immortal. Most definitely, California’s greatest story writer…
Q. What are you reading now?
Yiyun Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow.” Anything I might say about it would be superfluous and even stupid. Even so, I’ll say I haven’t been able to do anything the past three days but read this book, more and more slowly each hour. And what I know is this: I’ll have the book close, always, within arm’s reach, for the duration. Joy and grief, there’s no separating the two, period. Not if you are paying Li’s level of attention.
I’ve said too much. I should just say, read it. Don’t be afraid of it, read it.
Q. How do you decide what to read next?
Utterly randomly. A spine catches my eye on the free bookshelf outside the co-op grocery store in White River Junction, Vermont, and that’s the book for the next few days.
Q. Do you remember the first book that made an impact on you?
“The Cricket in Times Square.” How the cricket, forget his name, gets trapped in a picnic basket and brought to New York City. He’s got to figure out how to survive in a subway station…Beautiful cricket out of water story that’s remained in my mind for Jesus, like, 50 years.
Q. Is there a book or type of book you’re reluctant to read?
Though I’ve sort of written two (though I really tried to make them not about me, I didn’t succeed), I avoid memoirs.
Q. Can you recall a book that felt like it was written with you in mind (or conversely, one that most definitely wasn’t)?
Juan Rulfo’s “Pedro Páramo” was not written with me in mind, and yet something about the language in the book felt like it was meant to be a private conversation across languages. Another book I have within reach all the time. There are lines early on: “I was thinking of you, Susana. Of the green hills. Of when we used to fly kites in the windy season…” Something about the cadence of Rulfo’s language drew me in.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
The way that James in Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow” says, “Oh,” and how much weight this tiny word carries.
Q. Do you have a favorite book or books?
Too many to name, but another one of those I’ll always have within reach books: Andre Dubus’s “Selected Stories.” It’s like carrying around an entire town of lives.
Q. Do you have a favorite character or quote from a book?
In Dickens’s “Hard Times,” Stephen Blackpool says: “Tis a muddle.” No greater line of dialogue that I know.
Q. Are you someone who must finish every book you start – or is it OK to put down the ones you don’t connect with?
I can put down a book. I was three pages from the end of Robert Stone’s “Dog Soldiers,” and something bugged me about a book I otherwise liked and respected. I put it down and never finished. Three pages out. I really should return to it, but I never have.
Q. Do you have a favorite bookstore or bookstore experience?
Dog Eared Books in San Francisco. Armadillo’s Pillow on Sheridan Road, Rogers Park, Chicago. I’d like to die in either store, if I wouldn’t inconvenience the staff.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
That a minor character, Uncle Solly, is the one I loved the most. I miss thinking about him, which is weird; once I finish a book, I move on. But I still wonder about him. Maybe I didn’t do a good enough job imagining him on the page if he’s still on my mind. Or maybe he’s one of those characters that became independent of my imagination. I don’t know.
Q. If you could ask your readers something, what would it be?
You want to get a coffee?