Here is Chris's week in his own words.
Monday
Start the week by finishing Tuesday Nights in 1980, a debut novel by Molly Prentiss set in the NYC downtown art scene. I think it’s at turns terrific—evocative, insightful, poetic—and disappointing. I’ve rarely felt so conflicted about a book, but I’m glad to have read it. I also read large chunks of the New York Times every day, plus a piece of two from The New Yorker or The New Yorker Today.
Tuesday
I try to alternate reading books that I myself choose with those that are thrust upon me for the purposes of potential blurbs. I write thrillers, so people send me crime novels of every sort; there are always stacks of bound galleys or manuscripts sitting around, in a queue. First I read the pitch from the editor, which in today’s instance is someone with whom I used to work. (This isn’t unusual; I myself was an editor for a while.) I plod through 50 or so pages of this police procedural: damaged cops hunting for a predatory psychopath, an all-too-common combination of tropes that I’m tired of. Although there’s nothing especially objectionable about this book, I’m not enjoying it, and I’m not going to blurb it, so I won’t push on. Life is short and my piles are high.
Wednesday to Friday
For more than half of my short life, I’ve been a fan of Don DeLillo. I went to see him speak Monday night at the 92nd Street Y, in conversation with Dana Spiotta (who I thought was wonderful on stage, so I bought her Innocents and Others, for later). DeLillo’s new one, Zero K, is the perfect antidote to the unsatisfying bound galley: careful, incisive, original, thought-provoking. Though when a barista asks me, “What’s it about?” I have a hard time formulating a cogent answer. Reading all the crime fiction that I do, and of course writing it too, I’m in the habit of answering that question with a one-sentence plot summary. This doesn’t work for a DeLillo novel.
Thursday
I’m going to a party tonight at Restaurant Daniel for Saveur magazine, whose editor-in-chief is a close friend, so today I read most of the May issue, about France. After Daniel we head downtown to a party at Barbuto, celebrating chef Jonathan Waxman’s recent James Beard Award, where mostly I catch up with Aaron Sanchez. This is a guy who’s probably best known these days for appearing on TV cooking shows, but I worked with Aaron fifteen years ago, sitting around his restaurant drinking beer, figuring out how to make a book about Mexican comfort food. Thursday night is like a six-hour flashback to my old life as a cookbook editor, which was a good sort of life. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to have more than one career.
Saturday to Sunday
Saturday morning at 7:15, I need to leave for a Little League game. I finished the DeLillo last night, so I need new reading material to bring for the slow parts of the game. (Which for some people might mean the entire game. Not me. I love watching my kids play baseball.) The newspaper hasn’t been delivered yet, and at this hour I don’t have the time/patience to try to figure out which bound manuscript to tackle next, even though that’s what I’m supposed to do. But it’s my own damn rule and I can break it, so I bring along Laura Lippman’s brand-new Wilde Lake, which I picked up Wednesday at the Mysterious Bookshop, where I’d attended the launch of the anthology Unloaded: Crime Writers Writing Without Guns and dinner with some of the contributors. Laura’s After I’m Gone was one of my favorites of last year, and I fall quickly into the grip of this terrific new one. By Sunday night, I’m three-quarters finished. Tomorrow, I’ll start another bound galley.
Chris's week in a nutshell
Tuesday Nights in 1980 (2016)
Zero K (2016)
Wilde Lake (2016)
The Travelers is available now 9780385348485
More at http://www.chrispavone.com/
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