Summer reading: Joshua Cohen’s trick answers
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
For summer gets 2010, we’ve created the L.A. Times list of 60 books for 92 days. All of these are new titles, being released during the next three months -- a plethora of great summer reads.
At Jacket Copy, we’re asking writers and other bookish types about their favorite summer reads of the past. Joshua Cohen, author of the new massive, modernist novel ‘Witz’ -- and one of the Jewish writers celebrating The Bloom in Bloomsday in New York this week -- took our standard questions and stood them up on end.
L.A. Times: Do you remember reading a specific book or books during summer? What’s the title/author?
Joshua Cohen: I don’t believe in seasonal reading. That was actually the name of the book. ‘I Don’t Believe In Seasonal Reading.’ That’s how you turn a sentence into a title -- you just capitalize every word. Who’s the author? I guess I am.
LAT: What year was it, or how old were you?
JC: The year I came up with that title would be 2010. I am 29.
LAT: Where were you?
JC: A large, recently cleaned apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y.
LAT: What about the books was significant to you then?
JC: Books that have not yet been written are more significant than books that have been written. Books that have been written are ‘closed books’ -- they can’t get any better. Right now my proposed opus is all possible, all potential.
LAT: Have you reread the book/s? If so, has it changed at all for you? If not, why not?
JC: I have never reread a book. Rather the only books I’ve reread have been books I’ve written. They always change -- always a new meaning, always a new typo.
LAT: What are you reading this summer?
JC: Everything by Alexander Kluge (everything that’s been translated into English). ‘The Eye,’ Nabokov. ‘Nausea,’ Sartre. ‘Passages from Arabia Deserta,’ C.M. Doughty (Garnet Selection). ‘Characters,’ Jean de la Bruyère. A friend’s novel in manuscript. That’s July.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
twitter.com/paperhaus