The Con Man and the Writer

The difference between a con man and a writer is that a writer thinks up these elaborate stories and puts them on the page but a con man has the guts to see if they really work.

At least this is what Darin Strauss (author of Chang and Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You) says.

Darin Strauss gave in Newsweek his top of literary preferences. Here it is:


1. Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (crude as hell, yet a literary triumph)
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (it doesn't seem like you're reading a novel, but watching big, messy life play out in front of you)
3. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita is more famous, Pale Fire more ambitious; but this is his most accessible, warmest book)
4. Time's Arrow by Martin Amis (the book shows that, with the right idea, every single sentence can be made interesting
5. Collected Stories by V. S. Pritchett (a latter-day Chekhov; but his sentences, forgive the blasphemy, are better than Chekhov's)

I haven't read the stories of Pritchett, but I'd like to do it, to see whether Darin Strauss is right.

(A Life in Books)