Penchant for unstylish writers

Isaac Mizrahi, the fashion designer and author of the new memoir I.M., likes his literature “sort of plain”

WHAT BOOKS ARE ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND?

The complete works of Shakespeare. The Portrait Of A Lady and all the rest of Henry James, including a ravishing novel about him called The Master, by Colm Toibin.

I, Claudius, by Robert Graves.

Dr. Faustus, by Thomas Mann. (A lot of Thomas Mann on my nightstand. Buddenbrooks.

The Magic Mountain. Short stories.)

Austerlitz and The Rings Of Saturn, by W.G. Sebald.

I have a huge nightstand! Also I’m very possessive about books and I don’t necessarily edit. Things just pile up. I keep a broad selection of Mark Twain. Volumes of Tolstoy and Flaubert. Dawn Powell and Philip Roth. Some Seamus Heaney and Whitman. And I change my mind a lot. I like things and then I remember I like other things better.

WHAT SHOULD WE READ IF WE WANT TO LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT FASHION?

D.V., by Diana Vreeland. I trust my friends who talk about books they’re reading. My best friend, Mark Morris, who gives me books to read when we collaborate, some of which I have yet to return.

I also listen to my friend the interior designer Robert Couturier, who reads everything printed. He’s another insomniac with very similar tastes in literature to mine. He recommended the beautiful Patrick Melrose novels, which I devoured a few years ago. Also he introduced me to someone called Caroline Weber, whose book about Marie Antoinette, Queen of Fashion, I’d enjoyed 10 years ago and who’s recently been a guiding light in my pursuit of Proust. Her book Proust’s Duchess, about three women who were models for the Duchde esse Guermantes, is a masterpiece.

Also I listen to my bridge-playing friends Choire Sicha, Dale Peck and Richard Desroche. As bridge players we share a careful scepticism about everything, including literature. Rather than recommendations, those guys tell me which books I don’t have to read.

WHEN DO YOU READ?

I read at night when I’m supposed to be asleep. I read in the car. I know a lot of people get carsick from reading, but I get carsick if I’m not reading.

WHAT MOVES YOU MOST IN A WORK OF LITERATURE?

For me literature is most effective when it’s sort of plain. I like “unstylish” writers. I think of how much I love the book Stoner , by John Williams. And Raymond Carver makes me cry. I make exceptions to this rule about stylish writers: I love Joyce Carol Oates. And Fitzgerald. And Gertrude Stein. Also brevity and simplicity are not the same things. I never adored Hemingway. And often lengthiness can be the absolute soul of wit, as in Proust or Dickens.

I have a difficult time reading poetry (I’m much better when someone reads it to me) but when I do, usually those ideas about unstylish writing apply. I love Mary Oliver. I love Anne Carson. Style is suspicious to me in general. I think that’s true about my taste in everything. Food. Decor. Clothes.

WHICH GENRES DO

YOU ESPECIALLY ENJOY READING? AND WHICH DO YOU AVOID?

Ineverthoughtofmyselfassomeone whoreadswithingenresbutsinceyouasked, it occurs to me that I really love diaries. One of the most perfect books ever written is Dawn Powell’s The Diaries Of Dawn Powell. Noël Coward’s The Noël Coward Diaries is so funny. Samuel Pepys. Leo Lerman’s The Grand Surprise. Also I adore reading about food. I love cookbooks. I love compilations of old food writing; A. J. Liebling, Ruth Reichl; one of my “nightstand” books is something called Life Is Meals, by James and Kay Salter. I just read a wonderful book called The Gourmand’s Way, by Justin Spring. The only upsetting thing about it was how good a case he made to discredit certain aspects of M. F. K. Fisher, whom I revere as a god.

I stay away from popular novels. Many of them seem like premeditated screenplays. Unless three or four people recommend it, it’s best to wait for the streaming series.

HOW DO YOU ORGANISE YOUR BOOKS?

I have massive piles of books, things people send me or that I come across in bookstores, like everyone’s favourite place Three Lives. These books collect either in my bedroom in N.Y.C. or on the coffee table in Bridgehampton. I rifle through those piles till I’m sufficiently intrigued to start reading. For every three books in that pile, one gets read.

DO ANY WRITERS BRING AN ESPECIALLY STRONG SENSE OF FASHION OR STYLE TO THEIR LITERATURE?

Proust refers a lot to clothes and decor and food. But especially colour, which I think a lot about when I read. Whether it’s a colour specifically described as in the colour of Odette’s lingerie, or a colour suggested by the subtext of any book, it’s something inexplicable, like music that suggests colours which come to define a work. I see colour a lot when I listen to music and when I read.

WHAT BOOK MIGHT PEOPLE BE SURPRISED TO FIND ON YOUR SHELVES?

I have an enormous number of books about the game of bridge (which might surprise some people who think I’m a lousy bridge player!). I love Memoirs Of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar. In that book the emperor Hadrian talks about being an insomniac, sitting up nights writing while everyone else is asleep. Years ago when I read that I stopped hating being awake at night. I also remember being very inspired by Becky Sharp when I read Vanity Fair a long time ago. She’s my opposite in that she never worries. Also she’s very three-dimensional as a character. Neither good nor villainous.

As for antiheroes. I love Lady Macbeth. I love Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes novels, elusive as he is. Dracula is one of the great characters of all times. Just a fun guy. I love The Master And Margarita. In that book, which on the surface is about good and evil, there seem to be no bad or good characters, just images.

WHAT KIND OF READER WERE YOU AS A CHILD? WHICH CHILDHOOD BOOKS AND AUTHORS STICK WITH YOU MOST?

I don’t remember reading as a child. When I was 3½, I was hospitalised with spinal meningitis and there was one book (ironically I can’t remember which one) that was read to me so many times that I memorised it. I even memorised where the pages were turned. I fooled the adults, who were astonished because they thought I could read.

I remember the Madeline series by Ludwig Bemelmans because my mother read it to us when we were really young. Also the Dr. Seuss books which I consider masterpieces. Also the wonderful books about Eloise. But they were read to me. I do remember not liking Maurice Sendak as much as everyone else. I read Roald Dahl late in the game as a young adult to see what I missed and I adored it. When I was in grade school my mother started giving me grown-up books to read. I remember she gave me The Godfather when I was 11, which I loved, and a book called Earthly Paradise, by Colette, when I was 12, around the time of my bar mitzvah.

YOU’RE ORGANISING A LITERARY DINNER PARTY. WHICH THREE WRITERS, DEAD OR ALIVE, DO YOU INVITE?

Humour is really important to me, especially at dinner, so I would invite Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. And David Sedaris. I think he cooks too.

NYT