When Jayson Greene‘s debut novel, UnWorld, came out last year, he appeared on our First Taste Reading Series podcast, where he read an excerpt from the novel.
The book, out now in paperback, follows four interconnected lives after the mysterious death of a young man in a near-future where human consciousness can be digitally replicated, and AI has begun to reshape what it means to be alive.
We asked Greene to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
The earliest I can remember is probably The Phantom Tollbooth, although I retain very little about my first actual experience reading it. I think I was just drawn to it instinctually, the way children are drawn towards things— Norton Juster’s illustrations seemed familiar and inviting to me, as did the image of the dog with a clock on its side.
I was obsessed with my parents’ collection of Complete Charles Dickens, and I kept trying to read them and sliding off the steep cliff face of his sentences. But they seemed like the kind of books that one read, especially if one had a special feeling for books, so I kept trying until I finally got (most of the way) through Great Expectations.
What book helped you through puberty?
Probably The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, which provided my first window into the “adult” reader I would become. “How To Tell A True War Story” hit me so hard, at age 13—I was learning what writing could be.
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
I wish I had read Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, or Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild, or Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake—I wish I’d gotten into literary sci-fi and speculative fiction during those teenage years, and not waited around until my 30s! I was so ripe for it, but I missed out. Who the hell knows what I was doing instead.
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
This is a hilarious prompt! There can only be idiosyncratic answers, for we all have different writers whose sentences move around our internal furniture. I would say Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things would be there. Helen Garner would be there—Monkey Grip or The Children’s Bach. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying would be on there; hard to find better or more lyrical prose in English. Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina would be on there, which is the tiresome-doorstopper-refernce that I will never tire of actually referencing, because that book has never stopped feeling twinkling fresh to me.
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
The works of Yoko Ogawa, in particular The Memory Police and the short story collection Revenge. Kazuo Ishiguro, in particular When We Were Orphans and of course Never Let Me Go. Kathryn Davis’ The Thin Place and The Silk Road. Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach. Steven Milhauser’s Voices In the Night, particularly the short story “Phantoms.” Elena Ferrante, Days of Abandonment. Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human. Yoko Towada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear. Karen An-Hwei Lee, Love Chronicles of the Octopodes. So many goddamn books.
What books are on your nightstand now?
Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter, a gift from a dear friend. Samuel Delaney’s Babel-17, which I have not yet read. You Are The Fuhrer’s Unrequited Love, an incredible piece of what I can only call speculative historical fiction by the French writer Jean-Noël Orengo. The Burrow, a slim and lovely novel by an Australian writer named Melanie Cheng that was about as explosively honest about what the death of a child does to a family as anything I’ve read recently. What Happens At Night and Coral Glynne, both by Peter Cameron.
And a collection of X-Men issues from the Byrne/Claremont years.