Suss: another literary journal

“Are you grab­bing the reader by the scruff of the neck and drag­ging him into your writing?”

SUSS: As you joked when we spoke on the phone the other day, you’re not as well known as Norman Mailer. Certainly win­ning the Caine Prize this year will help in that respect. Even so, I was won­der­ing if you could give us the quick thumb­nail sketch ver­sion of your biography.

ECO: I worked in adver­tis­ing for almost a decade in Nigeria. I worked for a major adver­tis­ing agency, with 250 offices world­wide. I was a copy­writer but I was also still a writer. I was writ­ing and was involved in orga­niz­ing writ­ers. At some point I was the vice-chairperson of the Association of Nigerian Writers. So, even while in adver­tis­ing I was always interested—you know, my eyes never left writ­ing. And then I decided to come to Syracuse to study cre­ative writ­ing. So that’s what basi­cally brought me to the States. I stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing and fic­tion under George Saunders. He was actu­ally the guy who pulled me here, him and another guy called Arthur Flowers. I read a George Saunders story in a book and got in touch with him. That coin­cided with a friend of mine mov­ing to Syracuse to get his PhD. It some­how all hap­pened together. I applied and was invited to come.

SUSS: You con­tacted George Saunders after read­ing some­thing of his while you were still in Nigeria?

ECO: Yeah.

SUSS: That’s fan­tas­tic. What was it that you read that prompted you to con­tact him?

ECO: It’s a story of his —one that I teach every year now—a story called “I Can Speak.” It was pub­lished in an anthol­ogy edited by Zadie Smith called The Burned Children of America.

SUSS: Do you think your pre­vi­ous life as an adman informs your writ­ing life now? Do you see it as a sort of appren­tice­ship to the more for­mal writ­ing you’re doing now?

ECO: I think that from time to time I still find myself doing some of the things I used to do in adver­tis­ing. I still see myself pos­ing some of those same ques­tions when it comes to my writ­ing. Advertising is about atten­tion. It comes up espe­cially when I craft my titles—I used to write adver­tis­ing head­lines and we’re told in adver­tis­ing that the head­line is sup­posed to catch the reader by the scruff of the neck and drag him in. So when I write my titles I ask myself, “Are you grab­bing the reader by the scruff of the neck and drag­ging him into your writing?”

And adver­tis­ing has to do with com­pres­sion. You’re nec­es­sar­ily more of a min­i­mal­ist than a max­i­mal­ist. Nobody is going to park their car on the side of the road while they’re dri­ving in order to read what’s on your bill­board. They’re just going to zip past it. So, if you don’t catch them, that’s it. I try to com­press my fic­tion similarly.

SUSS: Aside from the large chunk of time you’re encour­aged to devote to your writ­ing, what were some of the pri­mary ben­e­fits for you in being in the Creative Writing pro­gram at Syracuse?

ECO: I keep say­ing this over and over again—Syracuse was the best thing that ever hap­pened to my writ­ing. It was the wis­est thing I ever did in terms of my writ­ing. Because the Syracuse pro­gram is a very small pro­gram, you get to know every­body. Everybody’s inter­ested in your work. Of course, I was dif­fer­ent, in that my aes­thet­ics were dif­fer­ent. My work attracted a lot of atten­tion, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. Which helped me, ulti­mately. People were inter­ested in my being in their work­shop because I brought a whole new aes­thet­ics to the process. My crit­i­cal val­ues were really dif­fer­ent. I thought that a work had to…For an African writer, the whole idea of art for art’s sake is just self-indulgence. We think a work has to engage soci­ety, be socially con­scious. So I would always ask awk­ward ques­tions in work­shops. Like, “Yeah, this is beau­ti­ful and all, but the fact that you went to a bar yesterday—how does that change soci­ety?” [Laughs.]

I enjoyed Syracuse and it was really good for my writ­ing. One, I learned to take crit­i­cism, which is some­thing I never thought I would learn to do. I also learned to give crit­i­cism in a very use­ful way. And of course all those guys in Syracuse were really very kind peo­ple. They helped with my writ­ing, they helped me with all my ques­tions, they helped me set­tle in. Don’t for­get that it was a huge cul­ture shock—the place was very cold. I remem­ber my first semes­ter, every­thing I was writ­ing was just me moan­ing about the cold. [Laughs.] But they were very help­ful. In fact, they’re all like fam­ily now. George Saunders would invite me and my fam­ily to his house. Mary Gaitskill intro­duced me to her agent, who is now my agent. Arthur Flowers did all he could to help me set­tle him. Farnoosh Moshiri, an Iranian writer in exile, like myself, was also very help­ful with my writ­ing, offered crit­i­cism, even after work­shop. Syracuse molded me. If I become a great writer tomor­row, it’s all due to them. It’s a great pro­gram. I’ll con­tinue speak highly of it.

SUSS: As well you should. In hear­ing you speak about the pro­gram, though, it sounds that you maybe have more of a con­nec­tion to the fac­ulty than with your fel­low stu­dents. Do you think this was to do with your being older than the other stu­dents or because of your aes­thetic differences?

ECO: No, no—I was older. I came to Syracuse as a much older stu­dent. That’s it, really. I could relate more eas­ily to the fac­ulty. And, of course, I came with a very high level of ambi­tion. [Laughs.] And since the fac­ulty were doing the kinds of things I wanted to achieve and we were in the same age bracket…it made sense.

“I am part and par­cel of Africa. I tell peo­ple, I don’t wear my African-ness light.”

SUSS: Chris Abani, fel­low Nigerian ex-patriot author, in his amaz­ing 2007 TED Talk, said that if any of us want to know about Africa, we need to for­get the news reports and read Africa’s sto­ries. He then goes on to say that African writ­ers have “always been the cura­tors of the continent’s human­ity.” Those lines have stuck with me since I first saw video of his talk. I’m won­der­ing how you see your­self fit­ting in line with that argu­ment. Would you clas­sify what you’re doing as “curat­ing Africa’s humanity”?

ECO: I wouldn’t use the word cura­tor. Because obvi­ously a cura­tor is some­one who—you curate when you decide, “Well, I’m dis­tanc­ing myself from this thing, but I’m going to pre­serve it any­way.” You’re not a partaker.

SUSS: You become a collector.

ECO: Yes, exactly. So, if I’m talk­ing about an archae­ol­o­gist who comes to Africa and finds a par­tic­u­lar carv­ing and then has an exhi­bi­tion all over Europe and peo­ple come to see this beau­ti­ful thing that he’s col­lected, then he decides to keep it some­where in a museum, that’s my under­stand­ing of cura­tion. Whereas, I am part and par­cel of Africa. I tell peo­ple, I don’t wear my African-ness light. In every sense: I look African, I speak Africa, I am involved. I still go back there. I’m not an out­sider in any way. I see myself more as the curated than the curator.

That’s what the out­siders have always done. That’s what the early anthro­pol­o­gists had done, that’s what Conrad did, that’s what all the peo­ple who col­lected African art trea­sures and took them to Europe did—they were cura­tors of African art and African cul­ture. I’d like to lis­ten to the talk and hear all of Chris’s con­text, but I’d be sur­prised that he would see him­self that way. I think Chris is more a par­tic­i­pant than a curator.

SUSS: In his defense, he was speak­ing with­out notes in front of a very large, very dis­tin­guished audi­ence, so…

ECO: So I won’t be too hard on him. [Laughs.] I do agree with the first part of the state­ment, though. What was it exactly?

SUSS: If you want to know about Africa, for­get the news and read its stories.

ECO: Yeah, yeah. That’s true. There is more Afro-optimism, more opti­mism gen­er­ally in the sto­ries from Africa. The news pro­motes Afro-pessimism. That’s it basi­cally. I agree with that def­i­nitely. As for the curat­ing part, no, I’m not a cura­tor. I’m a participant.

SUSS: You men­tioned the hope­ful­ness that exists in sto­ries as opposed to the pes­simism of the news. I actu­ally wanted to ask you about the role of hope in your work. Your sto­ries often have at their heart some con­flict much larger than the indi­vid­ual characters—Orlando’s prob­lem in “Waiting” is not merely that he’s hun­gry or would like to be adopted into an American fam­ily, it’s the real­ity of the war going on around him, which can be incre­men­tally expanded to include the whole his­tory of the con­ti­nent, and that enlarged to encom­pass the his­tory of the world. Yet there’s hope­ful­ness to your sor­row­ful sto­ries. Even Orlando is, in his own way, opti­mistic and hope­ful. He repeat­edly says as much in his dia­logue. Do you find it impor­tant that these char­ac­ters feel this way or does it work its way into your sto­ries more naturally?

ECO: It’s an African thing. One of Africa’s great­est musicians—Nigeria’s great­est musician—Fela Kuti, one of his inim­itable and unfor­get­table albums is titled Shuffering and Shmiling. This sums up the sit­u­a­tion nicely. One of the things peo­ple always say when they go to Africa is how ebul­lient and how happy the peo­ple are. In fact, Nigerians were once called the hap­pi­est peo­ple on earth. We tend to be very hope­ful as a peo­ple. I’m a very pos­i­tive indi­vid­ual. I am never depressed. I don’t even know what depres­sion means. There are moments when I feel blue, moments when I feel unhappy, but I always see the good side of things, the good side of peo­ple, the good side of sit­u­a­tions. I think that’s my real­ity. And that’s the real­ity of most peo­ple in Africa. There are no shrinks in Africa.

SUSS: Really?

ECO: Yeah. There are no shrinks. That tells you something.

SUSS: I’d say.

ECO: They may exist, but they are very mar­ginal. It’s some­thing to pon­der. We try to work through our prob­lems and see the good side. There’s no way this wouldn’t sink into my char­ac­ter­i­za­tion. Besides, you know, I think that every great writer or every­one who has plans to be a great writer, you have to love your char­ac­ters. If you’re cyn­i­cal, if you don’t love them, this will show. You won’t be able to relate to them. And, of course, my char­ac­ters are peo­ple I know. That’s the truth. And these peo­ple that I know are happy, smil­ing, con­fi­dent peo­ple, so it would be unfair to por­tray them as cyn­i­cal, unhappy, or down in the dumps.

SUSS: They’re peo­ple that you know in that you’re pulling them from real life or they’re peo­ple that you know because you’ve spent so much time writ­ing them?

ECO: Well, every char­ac­ter that I write is a com­pos­ite. Definitely that doesn’t mean I am writ­ing about my par­ents or my fam­ily or my kids directly. But these char­ac­ters are com­posed of peo­ple that I know, peo­ple that I’ve lived with. And these are typ­i­cally happy people.

SUSS: As a Nigerian author who pub­lishes pri­mar­ily in Europe and North America, do you ever feel there’s some expec­ta­tion of you by read­ers or edi­tors or pub­lish­ers to chron­i­cle some “Authentic African Experience,” some pres­sure from the out­side to write a cer­tain kind of story?

ECO: [Laughs.] Even if they do have these expec­ta­tions, I would pre­tend that I don’t know they exist. People have said that the African writer has to per­form for a Western audi­ence. I don’t think so. I don’t know what the expec­ta­tions are. Even if I do know, I pre­tend not to know. I write for my people.

I do like to be read here, cer­tainly. [Laughs.] It’s bet­ter that when you beat a drum, the whole com­mu­nity comes to lis­ten to your drum and dance to your drum than you beat a drum in your bed­room and you dance alone. That’s what I know. So I like to be read in North America and I like to be read in Europe and I like to be read by more peo­ple, but as for that expec­ta­tion, it’s not a pres­sure that I feel. I don’t know that there’s a pres­sure for me to write in a cer­tain way. Are there things that are mod­i­fied because of my audi­ence? I don’t think so. Has any­one ever told me to change some­thing so that I would not make any­one embar­rassed? I don’t think so. As a mat­ter of fact, if I tried not to offend anyone’s sen­si­bil­i­ties, it would be the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the peo­ple back in Africa.

SUSS: There have been a fair num­ber of Nigerian authors who’ve made their mark on world literature—the obvi­ous exam­ples being Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka. None of them seem to have really made their mark through the short story, though. I’m won­der­ing if there’s some part of you that yearns to grab hold of that title.

ECO: I’ve always won­dered why Africa’s not pro­duced a great prac­ti­tioner of the short story form—this despite the fact that there’s an oral tra­di­tion of short sto­ries in Africa. The oral tra­di­tion of sto­ry­telling is very strong and so the shorter form exists. I’ve always won­dered why we haven’t had our Chekov, our Hemingway. Most African writ­ers have dab­bled in the short story, but none of them have been great in that form. Except for Ben Okri, another Nigerian writer. He stopped writ­ing short sto­ries, but his ear­lier sto­ries were really great.

You know how in adver­tis­ing, we talk about a niche? I’ve always felt that this was a niche that needed to be filled and I thought I’d go fill that niche. I’m work­ing on a novel right now—I’ve sold my novel to Harper Collins, so I’m work­ing on a novel. But the short story is the dar­ling of all art forms as far as I’m con­cerned. I’ll con­tinue to write short sto­ries, though. There is that niche and it needs to be filled.

SUSS: Are you just work­ing on the novel now?

ECO: I’m work­ing on the novel, called This House Is Not For Sale. That’s it. I’m lost in it. The novel is going to bend me or break me. It’s very ambi­tious. I can’t talk much about it, but I’m look­ing for­ward to hav­ing more time in the spring when I get to Georgetown to work on it, hope­fully fin­ish it. And, of course, I always have about three sto­ries on my desk­top I’m work­ing on, too. I’ll always be writ­ing stories.

SUSS: Does the short story feel more com­fort­able to you, more nat­ural, or is it just that there’s that niche that needs to be filled so it has that draw to it?

ECO: It’s funny. I just feel that the short story hap­pens to be a form where the Twitter gen­er­a­tion of the West meets the folk­tale of Africa. In Africa, you’re told a short story before you go to bed. You gather around your mother and she tells you a folk­tale that teaches morals. And we live in a time where peo­ple are too impa­tient, they just want to retweet things or read SMS mes­sages or read short blog entries—the short story taps into that as well. I don’t know of any other art form that cap­tures this place where the South and the West meet as they do in the short story.

“We may have come late, but we kicked the door open and we intend to be a part of the conversation.”

SUSS: In prepar­ing for this con­ver­sa­tion, I kept com­ing across a quote from Meakin Armstrong about your Caine Prize-winning story “Waiting.” I’m sure you’ve seen this: he said the story “isn’t pre­ten­tious nor rife with lit­er­ary trick­ery. It’s sim­ply a well-told story.” I kept return­ing to that, as it strikes me as an odd state­ment to make about a story that not only alludes directly to Beckett and Dickens but also essen­tially re-imagines Waiting for Godot as hap­pen­ing in a dis­placed per­sons camp. It cer­tainly isn’t gim­micky, but that does strike me as lit­er­ary trick­ery of the high­est order, the best pos­si­ble sort of lit­er­ary trick­ery. You said in an inter­view a cou­ple years ago that you “find [your]self twist­ing other people’s sto­ries, giv­ing them [your] own end­ings and won­der­ing what [you] would do with the same mate­r­ial.” Do you find this con­ver­sa­tion with the canon, with all the work that’s pre­ceded you, to be an essen­tial aspect of being a writer, as a sort of lit­er­ary trick­ery, or merely as a way to do bat­tle with the blank page?

ECO: I don’t remem­ber if it was Orwell or George Bernard Shaw who said the day a man decides to buy a type­writer in order to become a writer, he’s no longer one of the ordi­nary peo­ple. I’ll mod­ify that to say, the day you buy a type­writer or decide to write and face the blank page, you’re already in con­ver­sa­tion. You’re already tak­ing posi­tions. You’re already in dia­logue with those who’ve come before you and you’re ini­ti­at­ing a dia­logue with those who are com­ing after you. One of the great­est African nov­els is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. It’s in con­ver­sa­tion with Conrad. They are fight­ing or dis­agree­ing, but they are in conversation.

So, yeah, I found that state­ment to be odd as well. There are cer­tain delib­er­ate story-logic choices that I made in that story and lit­er­ary ref­er­ences I made directly. It may be obliquely so, but it ref­er­ences the texts that have gone before it. I think that if you look at that story, even the dia­logue is an attempt to repli­cate Beckett’s dia­logue. Everything’s delib­er­ate. I see myself as a writer in con­ver­sa­tion with other writ­ers. I believe that. Everybody who tries to write, from the moment you pick up your pen, you’ve joined the big­ger con­ver­sa­tion. African writ­ers are part of that con­ver­sa­tion. We may have come late to it, but we kicked the door open and we intend to be a part of the con­ver­sa­tion. It’s also say­ing, “Look, we’re part of human­ity.” I see myself as part of the con­ver­sa­tion with the lit­er­a­ture of the world. It’s a feast and every­one is invited.

SUSS: There’s a theme that runs through some num­ber of your sto­ries, where the tra­di­tional is at odds with a more con­tem­po­rary view of the world. “A Letter from Home” rather hilar­i­ously plays with this idea. There’s also the more gen­eral lit­er­ary tra­di­tion you are in con­ver­sa­tion with as an author. How do you see the con­flict play­ing out in your work? Or, rather, what do you hope a reader takes away from your work in regard to this strug­gle between the tra­di­tional and the new?

ECO: You know, I don’t think I ini­ti­ated that con­ver­sa­tion. Like I said before, for me it’s about a shared human­ity. I want a reader to say, “Oh, okay. These peo­ple laugh, these peo­ple have foibles, these peo­ple have ambi­tions, and these peo­ple feel the way I do.” That’s it, basi­cally. You know, how did peo­ple in the West come to be closer to ani­mals? How come the dog is what it is today and no longer a work­ing ani­mal, which is what it was ini­tially? The dog was either guard­ing peo­ple or it was pulling peo­ple as a means of trans­port or it was pro­tect­ing the house or being used for hunt­ing. How come the dog evolved and became a pet, a com­pan­ion, a friend, some­one you give a name, you shake hands with, some­one you get intro­duced to—how did this hap­pen? It is because, over time peo­ple began to real­ize that dogs were intel­li­gent ani­mals, so peo­ple began to human­ize them. People began to real­ize that dogs are very loyal. That’s a human attribute. Dogs are very patient, dogs are kind, dogs will react pos­i­tively if you show gen­eros­ity to them.

So I think that those of us who are writ­ing from the out­side, what we see our­selves doing is to say, “Look, there’s a com­mon human­ity that we share.” When I por­tray my char­ac­ters as peo­ple who share this same human­ity as your­self, you per­haps begin to real­ize that maybe we are closer than we think we are. That’s what I try to do.

I don’t know how right that dog anal­ogy is, by the way. [Laughs.]

SUSS: [Laughs.] I’m sure there’s an evo­lu­tion­ary anthro­pol­o­gist ready to take you to task.

ECO: Of course. [Laughs.] Always.

“What hap­pens, I think, is that teach­ing shaves about ten years off your intel­lec­tual age.”

SUSS: What’s impor­tant for you to get across to your stu­dents in a writ­ing class?

ECO: The great­est thing for me is to tell my stu­dents to lean on their strengths. Which is all I do. My strength is sto­ry­telling, so that’s what I lean on. I ride that horse…what’s that American phrase? I just keep pluck­ing that chicken. That’s what I do. Rather than focus on their weaknesses—which we do call atten­tion to—I’d much rather focus on what their strength is and then lean on it. That’s how you go further.

SUSS: Does that come down to, “You write really great dia­logue. You should focus on that…” or is broader than that?

ECO: It’s that. Exactly that. If your writ­ing is dialogue-driven, why don’t you explore sto­ries that are more dialogue-driven? Why don’t you read more Hemingway, for instance? How come Hemingway’s dia­logue is so great? What do you think about August Wilson? Have you thought about writ­ing plays? Why don’t you look at writ­ers whose strength is writ­ing dia­logue and look at what they did with it. Are you going to look at “Haircut,” for instance, and say, “I’m going to write a story that is just one long spiel, just one per­son talk­ing.” And that’s it. Just, “What’s my strength? Is my strength set­ting? Should I edge toward using set­ting as char­ac­ter?” If your strength is sto­ry­telling, just tell the story and then every­thing else will just fall into place.

That’s a bet­ter way—well, not a bet­ter way, but that’s what I think works best. I find it’s bet­ter than pick­ing at weak­nesses and then find­ing one to flog to death. We can say, “You don’t have a story line. That’s a prob­lem.” But we can also say, “You write like some of the French nou­veau roman writ­ers who didn’t have story lines. What did they do with this weak­ness? Are there con­tem­po­rary writ­ers who don’t have story lines? How do they lean on this and move for­ward?” For me that works bet­ter. Maybe it’s the kind of school I come from. I’d much rather stress the pos­i­tive than the negative.

And do not for­get that not every­one in your class is going to become a writer. If you’re too hard on one per­son, you might com­pletely turn that per­son away from the enjoy­ment of writ­ing and read­ing lit­er­a­ture. Whereas, if you teach that per­son in a pos­i­tive way, that per­son may not become a writer, but that per­son will buy books in the future because she knows lit­er­a­ture is worth pre­serv­ing, it is beautiful.

SUSS: Was this some­thing that arose in response to the end­less work­shops of an MFA pro­gram or is it more per­sonal, from that same opti­mism you spoke of earlier?

ECO: It’s more a life­time phi­los­o­phy. I was an adver­tis­ing copy­writer, I’m a cre­ative writer now; I trained junior copy­writ­ers, I teach appren­tice writ­ers now. I’ve always found through all of it that lean­ing on your strength works much better.

SUSS: Do you find that teach­ing informs your writ­ing at all? Has the con­stant inter­ac­tion with stu­dents bled into the process for you in any way?

ECO: [Laughs.]

SUSS: Oh?

ECO: Well, what I find that my stu­dents do for me is that they point me in the direc­tion of things that I wouldn’t ordi­nar­ily read. Right now they are point­ing me in the direc­tion of Twilight. That’s something.

SUSS: Have you read the Twilight books?

ECO: Well I have to now! [Laughs.] Because that’s some­thing many of my stu­dents have pointed me toward. We went from talk­ing about the Gothic in Poe to talk­ing about Twilight. And then the whole idea of Dracula and some kind of veg­e­ter­ian monster—what’s this? Some kind of mon­ster that doesn’t suck blood but is a vegetarian?

SUSS: I have no idea what that is, but it sounds awesome.

ECO: We had this really inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion and some­how we arrived there and now I have to read Twilight! One thing that teach­ing does is it opens your eyes to the pos­si­bil­ity of what you con­sider low art also being high art. My atten­tion is called to many things this way. My stu­dents nudge me in direc­tions I wouldn’t nor­mally go on my own. I’ve started read­ing young adult fic­tion now, for instance, because quite a few of my stu­dents read YA—

SUSS: And one of your col­leagues here at PC writes YA.

ECO: Yes, Peter Johnson. So, since I came here I’ve read, like, twelve YA titles. My stu­dents are really inter­ested in YA, Peter Johnson writes YA, so I’ve become interested.

What hap­pens, I think, is that teach­ing shaves about ten years off your intel­lec­tual age. So that way you don’t go mad, read­ing only Kafka or Gogol or Hemingway for­ever. You can read some other things that are going on. It’s an advan­tage. You want to be young, you want to keep abreast of what’s hap­pen­ing, you want to read what they are read­ing. And you’re not just in a place of say­ing that’s cool or that’s awe­some, but you can also really help fash­ion crit­i­cal tools for approach­ing that kind of text and point­ing out why lit­er­a­ture that lasts may not be the kind of thing some of them are reading.

“So long as I’m trans­ported from the hum­drum of my day-to-day existence.”

SUSS: What writ­ers do you lean on as influ­ences or ones you come back to as touchstones?

ECO: I’ll tell you this, here’s what typ­i­cally hap­pens: before an inter­view, I have this ros­ter of writ­ers I think of that when I’m asked this ques­tion I’m going to say this, this, this, that. Half of the time I for­get. And half of the time I real­ize that my favorites are in such flux. I’m always mov­ing for­ward. I’m read­ing this guy today, I’m lost in this world, I really admire him, I think he’s doing great things; five years down the line, am I going to? I don’t know. Are there peo­ple that are con­stants? I don’t know. Quite frankly, I don’t know.

If we’re talk­ing about African writ­ers, for instance, I love Chinua Achebe, I love Soyinka, I love the poet Christopher Okigbo, I like my con­tem­po­raries like Adichie and Abani. I could also move to North Africa and say one of the great­est nov­el­ists that ever lived was Naguib Mahfouz, who wrote the Cairo Trilogy. I could move from there and go to Ghana and say Ayi Kwei Armah is great—I read him years ago. I could come to North America and say, in terms of short sto­ries the great­est story I’ve ever read is “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” by Ernest Hemingway or “Haircut” by Ring Lardner. Or even Kurt Vonnegut or some of the con­tem­po­rary things I’m read­ing by George Saunders. It could be Haruki Murakami in Japan. I’m always read­ing. I’m always pick­ing these guys up and drop­ping them back down. So I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s any­one I come back to over and over again. There is a poem I come back to often: “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold. I don’t know…I go back to it. It’s one poem that I’ve read that has become a touchstone.

SUSS: Did you come to it at a par­tic­u­larly poignant point in your life or was it just some­thing that spoke to you and you just go back to it?

ECO: I just go back to it. There are phrases in there that I think are eter­nal. Are you famil­iar with the poem?

SUSS: I am, yeah. “The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair…” I went through a huge Arnold period in col­lege, actually.

ECO: Right. Okay. So when he talks about igno­rant armies fight­ing by night…I don’t know. I just love that poem. If there’s one touch­stone I might have, it would be that. And, of course, Hemingway, his short sto­ries. I teach them, I reread them. But lean on them, in that sense: no. I don’t know.

SUSS: What makes a great read­ing expe­ri­ence for you?

ECO: It’s what makes a great human expe­ri­ence for me. Like this con­ver­sa­tion we’re hav­ing, I can get lost in it and when I emerge from it I real­ize that five min­utes ago I was lost in another world. I think that great art, great lit­er­a­ture, great con­ver­sa­tion, great friend­ships: they’re all about get­ting lost some­where within them. It’s like when I open a book, I’ve gone into a com­part­ment and shut the door and I emerge from the book at the end and—Whoa! It’s back to real­ity. The sun is shin­ing and the birds are chirp­ing and it’s like, “Oh, it’s fall here.” I look for that qual­ity. I just want to be lost in that world. That’s my lit­mus test. Whether it’s a book, a movie, when I go out to eat—I want to be lost in that expe­ri­ence and emerge a dif­fer­ent person.

SUSS: Does it mat­ter where you’re being trans­ported? Often you’ll hear peo­ple say they’d like to be trans­ported some­where they’ve never been, either phys­i­cally, tem­po­rally, emotionally—

ECO: No, it doesn’t mat­ter: I just want to be trans­ported. [Laughs.] So long as I’m trans­ported from the hum­drum of my day-to-day existence.