Mug your favorite author
Okay, a question for readers and writers, and writers who are readers, and most of all readers who want to be writers:
What book or books do you wish you had written? If you could travel back in time and steal the manuscript out of someone’s outgoing mail and send to an agent with your name on it, what would it be?
I’ll start this off with two books that I love on their own merits but also secretly resent the authors a little for being the ones who wrote them.
The first is Watership Down, by Richard Adams. It was the first “real” book I ever read, back in the fourth grade, and it has lost none of its descriptive richness, deep melancholy or startlingly brutal realism. I can also say without hesitation that there’s nothing else out there like it. It works as allegory and as straight narrative, as a metaphor for the human struggle to thrive and survive and also as an adventure story.
The second is sort of a cop-out, since it’s just about everyone’s favorite book. But John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany has an almost universal appeal for its fascinating characters that manage to break out of the author’s sometimes maddening fondness for quirky eccentrics and become both real and dear to us. These characters are bound by Fate with a big “f”, in ways that become clear in literally the final handful of pages, and no matter how many times you read it, you will always feel both devastated and renewed atthe end. I swear to you, all I have to do is think of the first line of the novel, or even worse, the last line, and I get this big lump in my throat.
I don’t think either author ever topped these books in their own output. Adams wrote some interesting stuff, including Shardik, which explored the power of religion and, yes, Fate with a big “f”, but nothing with the appeal of his first book. Irving came close with Cider House Rules before absolutely losing his mind. Good lord, did you read Son of the Circus, or A Widow for One Year? Perhaps I can still do us all a favor and start stealing his future manuscripts.
6 Comments
Love the topic! Hmmm…I guess I’d choose Swan Song by Robert McCammon and A Little Princess by F.H. Burnett. I’m sure there are tons more…
As far as Watership Down, I saw that cartoon when I was 5 and it freaked me out so bad I never read the book.
Sounds like I’m missing out.
The Witches by Roald Dahl … I’ve always loved that book
I wish I had written “Saint Maybe,” by Anne Tyler. Also “Bridges of Madison County,” Robert James Waller (probably that one first actually). Those are the first two that popped into my head.
I wish I had completed ‘Sanditon’ in place of that other lady who did it.
But weirdly enough, I wish I had written my own book (the one that lives in my head!) more than any other book. Even though that sounds incredobly pretentious.
Re: John Irving. Really ? I did like Son of the Circus and A Widow for One Year a lot.
Hi Adelle! We miss you!
i try to find something at google.com and take it on your site…thanks