By the Book by Pamela Paul Page A

distractions, and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence, and alter my thinking forever. Either that, or the latest photos of celebrities’ babies.
    What were your favorite books as a child? Did you have a favorite character or hero?
    The complete Wizard of Oz series, by L. Frank Baum. Over the course of those fourteen books, stalwart Dorothy Gale triumphs, step-by-step, through precisely what Joseph Campbell would later call “the hero’s journey.” I think Dorothy may be the only little Midwestern girl you could ever put in the same archetypal category as Odysseus or Siddhartha. She was absolutely totemic for me.
    Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t?
    Every few years, I think, “Maybe now I’m finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand Ulysses .” So I pick it up and try it again. And by page ten, as always, I’m like, “What the HELL…?”
    If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know? Have you ever written to an author?
    The poet Jack Gilbert. (No relation, sadly.) He’s the poet laureate of my marriage: my husband and I have read him aloud to each other for years, and he exerts a subtle influence over the way we understand ourselves in love. I would like to thank him for that, but I’ve always been too shy to write him a letter.
    What are your reading habits? Do you take notes? Electronic or paper?
    If I’m reading for pleasure, I scrawl giant enthusiastic circles and exclamation points over particularly magical paragraphs. If I’m reading for research, it all goes neatly onto index cards and packed away into tidy shoeboxes.
    What book made you want to become a writer?
    Probably Curious George . Or one of the other first books I ever saw. I never recollect wanting to be anything else, is what I mean.
    Read any good memoirs recently?
    I lately discovered A Three Dog Life , by Abigail Thomas, and it’s stunning.
    What’s the best movie based on a book you’ve seen recently?
    Oh, come on, now—that’s a setup! But since you asked, back in 2010 there was this nice movie with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem that really meant a lot to me.…
    What do you plan to read next?
    Ulysses .
    Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love . Her other books include The Last American Man , Committed , and The Signature of All Things .
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    Fan Letters
    Gail Godwin writes exquisite letters. James Salter, too—and Salter uses an old typewriter and rewrites by hand. His handwriting is very good. He uses hotel stationery, some of it very exotic. Kurt Vonnegut was a very good letter writer, too. As you might imagine, he was very funny. Grass writes me in German and in English, which is how I write to him, but his English is much better than my German.
    â€” John Irving
    I’ve written to lots of authors—fan letters. From the heart.
    â€” Richard Ford
    I’m afraid that I squander as much as 90 percent of my time writing letters—e-mails—to authors, my writer-friends. The problem is that they write back, and so do I. And suddenly the morning has vanished irretrievably, or ineluctably (as Stephen Dedalus would say). And I certainly receive many letters, a goodly proportion of them beginning bluntly: “Our teacher has assigned us to write about an American writer and I have chosen you, but I can’t find much information about you. Why do you write? What are your favorite books? Where do you get your ideas? I hope you can answer by Monday because my deadline is…”
    â€” Joyce Carol Oates
    I wrote to René Goscinny when I was seven or eight, a fan letter about Asterix. He wrote back, saying that he was very proud to have made a little English girl laugh.
    â€” Emma Thompson
    I’ve written to lots of writers. Laurie Colwin, after reading and