Interview With a Bibliophile: Katy Carl
It’s Monday, and time once again for “Interview With a Bibliophile” in which I invite some lovely bibliophiles I know and love to answer some questions about tastes, reading habits, and preferences. This is to pique some interest among friends and family about new book finds, to perhaps stir up some thought provoking ideas, and to simply share our mutual love of books. If you love books, I hope you will join us and take a look.
Today I will be interviewing my friend Katy Carl. Katy is the editor of Word on Fire: Luminor and writer in residence at the University of St. Thomas–Houston. She is the author of two novels: As Earth Without Water and Fragile Objects ( Wiseblood Books ).
As a lifelong Southerner, Katy’s first great journey outside the south was to South Bend and Chicago. She now calls the Lone Star State of Texas her home, but in the spirit of true confession, she does not own, nor has she ever owned, a cowboy hat. She loves to swim but admits to no longer running, unless, of course, something is chasing her! As a child, she had a brief brush with starlit fame when she auditioned for a Hollywood film and got as far as being asked to send a screen test, but that is where the road to Hollywood ended, alas. That fact is punctuated by her emphatic, "Thank God!” She loves coffee ice cream and often enjoys a bowl over a good novel! Katy was the first writer I met who emphasized to me the craft of writing. Using the carefully chosen word, carving out sentences that waste no words or phrases. I found it a fascinating concept, this beautiful idea of writing as careful craft. We have yet to drink that elusive glass of wine together under the summer shade trees in the Central West End of my home, and once her home, city of St Louis, but we hold out hope (which springs eternal, they say) that this will happen one day. I happily welcome her to this interview!
As a published author yourself, who are your mentors? Which writers have inspired you most to pick up your pen?
Katy: Once you start listing, where do you stop? Among the living, I’d be nowhere at all without so many of you reading this—but I dare say you know who you are and what utterly unrepayable debts I owe you, each and all. Among departed authors whose works have influenced me I have to begin by naming Sigrid Undset, Toni Morrison, Flannery O’Connor, J.F. Powers, Francois Mauriac, and Henry James—by no means an exhaustive list.
What is your favorite genre of book? Novel? Poetry? Biography? Essays? You can have more than one, of course!
I’m obsessed with the novel, classic and contemporary, as a form. But I am also lost in awe of what poets do—they crystallize experience and understanding in gemlike form. We all need to be reading more poetry.
What was your life changing novel? The one it was hard to put down to return to real time? You can have more than one.
Yeah, there’s no way to limit this to one or even to a handful, but Kristin Lavransdatter, Viper’s Tangle, Wise Blood, Brideshead Revisited, and The Ambassadors for starters.
How would you convince reluctant adults that reading is vital to their growth as a person? What reading habits would you recommend they begin with?
I’d begin with a question: What is it in real life that you love? A book can give that back to you in double-distilled form. So start with what delights you. Literature has something for everyone. Just take it in small doses at first: ten, fifteen minutes a day. One story. One poem. One section of a nonfiction work. Try different things. You may think you don’t like reading, but actually what it is is that you don’t like the books you think you should like, or the books you think other people think you should like. Not only are there ways to learn to like at least some of those books, or at least appreciate them for what they are, there are also other books out there that may be more suited to your temperament. Give the printed page ten minutes a day and see what those ten minutes will do for your mindset, your perspective, your ability to pay attention. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I think you’ll be doing much more than ten minutes much sooner than you imagine.
If you could choose five books to inspire younger, twenty somthing readers what would they be and why?
Ecclesiastes (from the Bible), because you think existential crises were just invented, but in truth there’s nothing new under the sun. The Gospel of Mark because not only is it a perfection of narrative art—he doesn’t waste a word; you’ll finish it in an hour—it’s a perfect revelation of God and the human person. Story of a Soul, because the interior life is an adventure. Walden, because you can just do things. The Road, because we all need to be carrying the fire.
What is the most challenging genre of book for you to tackle? The one most out of your comfort zone? Why?
Wait: challenging to write or to read? There are some kinds of book I’ll never write although in some sense I enjoy them, like a treatise on academic theology, and others I just don’t find appealing on any level—I refrain from giving examples here because it turns out I can’t do it without the sound of shots fired—but in principle I never want to limit myself from having a lively feeling for the good in any authentic work of human intelligence. Still, I balk before highly technical works that just give way more detail than any nonspecialist actually needs: but then I remember that that is how most people feel about, say, manuals on poetic scansion, which I personally find delightful. So it’s not as though such works don’t need to exist. They name real things that really affect human lives and human crafts that make life better. But at the same time, not everyone needs a specialist vocabulary for everything.
What are you reading now? In the coming year?
Your book-length literary submissions! Please visit the Luminor website to find out how to turn them in. During off hours, I’m making my way through a couple of big, Texas-sized histories of Texas, in order to avoid finishing writing my own big, Texas-sized comedic novel.
Well, thank you for sitting down with me to do this interview. I especially love your suggestions to reluctant readers! And until we have that glass of wine in person, I toast you from afar!
You can read more of Katy’s thoughts on her substack: Depth Perception.
I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull