Person
Every book Jayne Anne Phillips recommended on podcasts
Jayne Anne Phillips’s most recommended books
- A Death in the Family by James Agee
- Fat City by Leonard Gardner
- Let us now praise famous men by James Agee
- Rabbit, Run by John Updike
- The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Jayne Anne Phillips brings a distinguished literary perspective to podcasts focusing on the creative arts and the meticulous craft of writing. Drawing on her background as an acclaimed novelist and professor, she frequently highlights classic works of American literature that deeply influenced her development as a writer. She recommended Leonard Gardner's novel Fat City, praising it as an example of intensely studied and masterfully executed writing. She also cited James Agee's A Death in the Family as one of the most important and enduring books for her, alongside the collaborative non-fiction work Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, created by Agee and photographer Walker Evans, which she described as a deathless and necessary book. In discussing her own writing process and literary inspirations, Phillips reflected on carrying William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury everywhere with her while writing her own novel Lark and Termite. Furthermore, she shared a personal anecdote about discovering John Updike's novel Rabbit, Run in her father's cupboard as a child, and discussed the opening line of her own debut novel, Machine Dreams.
Books recommended by Jayne Anne Phillips
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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
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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
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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
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Machine dreams
Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips is a critically acclaimed novel that traces the fragmentation of a West Virginia family across several decades against the backdrop of mid-century American history and the Vietnam War.
Discussed“That's the first line of Machine Dreams. Yeah. My first novel.”
Where to get it
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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
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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
Books Jayne Anne Phillips wrote
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| My Top 10 Writing Lessons from 2025 | How I Write | 2025-12-03 | 1 |
| Pulitzer Winning Professor Teaches Me Writing — Jayne Anne Phillips | How I Write | 2025-08-06 | 5 |
Other mentions (9: passing, ad reads, own books)
“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,”
“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.”