“Several years back (and by several, I probably mean
12), I decided to read every Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in chronological
order. I thought it’d force me to read some books I already should have read (The Grapes of Wrath, 1940 winner) and
also read some more obscure novels I never would have picked up otherwise (the
truly lovely Early Autumn, by Louis
Bromfield, 1927). Alas, I have stalled out on Honey in the Horn, by H. L. Davis (1936). I find it physically
impossible to pick up this book, and over the past few years, it has been
demoted from the top of my night stand, to the shelf below my night stand,
where it gathers dust and resents my neglect. It’s not the book’s fault. I just
can’t get past the title — Honey in the
Horn? — and its rather ominous meaning: ‘from a line in a square-dancing
tune.’ Shiver. Someday the guilt will break me.” —Gone Girl novelist Gillian Flynn, on books she is embarrassed not
to have read yet, in a “By the Book”
interview, The New York Times Book Review,
May 11, 2014
A Shocking and Predictable Election
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