Scott Broker is a queer writer, bookseller and teacher based in Los Angeles. His debut novel, “The Disappointment,” is in bookstores now. He responded to the Book Pages Q&A via email
Q. Please tell readers about your new book.
“The Disappointment” follows a grieving couple who go to the Oregon coast in hopes of finding some respite from their pain. They find many other things—a child environmentalist who can communicate with the dead, a method actor, a tantra-enthused couple—but peace is not really one of them.
Thematically, the book is concerned with artistic failure, grief, compromised intimacy, and whether or not we can ever know those we hold dearest. But it is also (I hope) sort of funny.
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Q. Is there a book or books you always recommend to other readers?
I often recommend “Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson. That book—a novel-in-verse about a romance between Herakles and a little red monster named Geryon—is a portal to many things: poetry for those afraid of poetry, classics for those afraid of classics, formal experimentation for those afraid of formal experimentation, and, most importantly, the mind of Anne Carson itself, which is so formidable that we should perhaps stay afraid of it. The book rewards every challenge it poses. Read it, then read everything else she’s done. I’m patiently awaiting her Nobel Prize.
Q. What’s something – a fact, a bit of dialogue or something else – that has stayed with you from a recent reading?
I have a note in my phone where I store sentences that stick with me for some particular reason. The last one I copied down, saved for its distilled wisdom, is from Rachel Kushner’s “The Flamethrowers”: “Enchantment means to want something and also to know, somewhere inside yourself, not an obvious place, that you aren’t going to get it.”
Q. Do you read books in translation – or another language? If so, which ones might you recommend?
I love reading books in translation, which often unravel the expectations of Anglophone writing by abiding by rule books entirely their own.
A few favorites:
“Hurricane Season” by Fernanda Melchor
“Fury” by Cleo Mendoza
“My Work” by Olga Ravn
“Woodcutters” by Thomas Bernhard
“On the Calculation of Volume” by Solvej Balle
“Revenge” by Yoko Ogawa
“Vertigo” by W. G. Sebald
“My Heart Hemmed In” by Marie Ndiaye
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Q. Which books are you planning to read next?
I’ve decided to tackle a long book this summer, and am going for “2666” by Roberto Bolaño, which I’m hoping to start in the next week or two. A few others I see on my immediate horizon: “Famous Men” by Julie Buntin, “Blue Sunset” by Denise Rose Hansen, and “The Oldest Bitch Alive” by Morgan Day.
Q. Is there a topic you’ll always read about?
I never tire of reading about loneliness. I’m curious about the language people apply to their experience of isolation. I’m also interested in people’s efforts to best their loneliness. Writing itself seems to be one of these efforts, maybe even a primary one.
For my fellow loneliness aficionados, I’d recommend picking up “The Lonely City” by Olivia Laing if you’d like to read about art and loneliness, then these books if you’d like to read some especially lonely fiction: “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” by David Markson, “City of Boys” by Beth Nugent, and “I Looked Alive” by Garielle Lutz.
Q. What’s your comfort read?
“Madness, Rack, and Honey” by Mary Ruefle. Ruefle is a poet, and this is a collection of her lectures on poetry, but really it is an assemblage of beguiling wonderment that I suspect anyone would enjoy. Getting to see the world through her eyes, however partially, feels like a stroke of true fortune.
Q. What’s something about your book that no one knows?
The entire time I was drafting the book, it began with an epigraph from Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” that got cut the day I finished writing. I suppose some north stars disappear once they’ve served their purpose, but I still owe a debt of gratitude to the sentence for being my entry to the text every day, even if it didn’t end up feeling essential for the finished novel.
The line, savored still: “Can there be misery loftier than mine?”
