Episode · How I Write · 2025-08-06
David Perell & Jayne Anne Phillips: books mentioned on How I Write
Pulitzer Winning Professor Teaches Me Writing — Jayne Anne Phillips
Jayne Anne Phillips recommended Fat City by Leonard Gardner, A Death in the Family by James Agee, and Let us now praise famous men by James Agee and others, and discussed The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and Rabbit, Run by John Updike.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
-
Fat City
Fat City by Leonard Gardner is a gritty, realistic novel depicting the struggles of small-time boxers in California.
Recommended“I mean I have I've read several books like that and one of them is Fat City by Leonard Gardner.”
Where to get it
-
The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury is a modernist novel by William Faulkner that employs stream-of-consciousness techniques to chronicle the decline of the Compson family.
Discussed“for me the sound on the fury is one of those books um it was a book that I carried with me everywhere all the time when I was writing Lark and Termite.”
Where to get it
-
Rabbit, Run
Rabbit, Run by John Updike is a landmark American novel that examines the restless life and marital struggles of its protagonist, Harry Angstrom.
Discussed“And I happened to find one day a copy of Rabbit Run, a mass market copy with a kind of, you know, kind of naked woman on the cover”
Where to get it
-
A Death in the Family
A Death in the Family by James Agee is a Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiographical novel that profoundly explores the sudden loss of a father and the subsequent grief experienced by a Knoxville, Tennessee family.
Recommended“Well, I think because one of my early mentors idols was James Ag and his book, A Death in the Family is still one of the most important books for me.”
Where to get it
-
Let us now praise famous men
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee, featuring photographs by Walker Evans, is a classic work of immersive journalism and documentary literature that meticulously chronicles the lives of impoverished sharecropper families in Alabama during the Great Depression.
Recommended“He did let us now praise Famous Men with Walker Evans, another absolutely, you know, deathless necessary book.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (12) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“I interviewed Jane Phillips who won the Puliter Prize for fiction for a novel called Nightw Watch.”
“And um this piece first appeared in Sweethearts, which was a book of 24 one-page fictions.”
“That's the first line of machine dreams. Yeah. my first novel and that's being said in the voice of the character who is the mother is the character who would have been my mother.”
“it was a book that I carried with me everywhere all the time when I was writing Lark and Termite.”
“And when I wrote the the beginning of Nightw Watch, it's this scene where this 12-year-old child who has sort of been the only adult in her family”
“And in Nightw Watch, I did have periods of time where I stopped writing because I didn't know where it was going.”
“Um, with this book in particular, with Nightw Watch, I went back inside the research, but also um,”
“Can you read this from machine dreams?”
“When you were writing Nightw Watch, I went back and studied 19th century Appalachian speech patterns. Yes. Tell me about that.”
“Well, I I read books written at that time and I think in the acknowledgements to machine dreams I me I mean acknowledgements to nightw watch I mentioned some of these books.”
“Family photographs and I have so many beautiful books of Civil War photographs. And that's why in Nightw Watch there are um photographs and documents”
“This book almost became my refuge in the way that the asylum becomes a refuge, a surprising refuge for Eliza and Connelly.”