“An unhealthy wish-fulfillment fantasy, so poorly written”: Harry Ricketts’ biggest regret in his book

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, where we uncover the reading habits of Aotearoa’s writers and guests. This week: Harry Ricketts – poet, literary scholar and author of the memoir First Things and thirty other books.

The book I wish I had written

Byron’s novel in comic verse Don Juan. SO I would be “crazy, wicked and dangerous to know”. (Or not.)

Everyone should read

Carol Ann Duffy The world Marry will make you laugh, think and envy Duffy’s poetic audacity.

The book I want to be buried with

Michel de Montaigne Trials. All will be quiet in the grave and I will need much to ponder while I decompose.

The first book I remember reading alone

at Beatrix Potter Tom Kitten’s story. I was six years old and, like Tom, wanted to climb up the chimney and onto the roof. I thought I could easily deal with those rats who wanted to put him in a roly poly pudding.

From left to right: the book Harry Ricketts wished he had written; the book he thinks we should all read; and the first book he remembers reading on his own.

The book I wish I never read

I had to teach DH Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover during a stay in the 1980s as freshmen. It’s just a sick man’s wish-fulfillment fantasy and so poorly written.

The book that haunts me

I read Alfred Andersch for the first time Sansibar or the little Grund (in German) when I was 15. It describes a series of loosely connected characters, all in danger, who come together in a small North Sea town in the late 1930s. I still remember some of the lines.

The book that made me cry

Anna Sewell Black of beauty. Well, obviously!

The book that made me laugh

Joseph Heller Catch-22. It’s a dark laugh, of course,

If I could only read three books for the rest of my life, they would be

Jane Austen Persuasion because it’s about surviving when all hope is gone. That of George Eliot Mid walk because it is THE great English novel and brilliantly captures life’s mixture of tragedy and comedy. Wendy Cope Collected poems because his poems are both funny and melancholic, and that would have been necessary with just three books.

From left to right: The Book That Made Harry Ricketts Laugh; one of his three eternal books; and Ricketts’ choice for best New Zealand novel.

THE book character I identify with most

Anne Elliot in Persuasion. See above.

Meeting with an author

At Writers and Readers Week 2014 in Wellington, I chaired a session with literary critic and feminist essayist Terry Castle; she proposed to me on stage.

New Zealand’s Greatest Book

Patricia Grace My. Show me a bigger…

New Zealand’s greatest writer

Allen Curnow. He wrote the great local poems from the Pākehā perspective. He is technically unmatched and understands everything about the lack of God.

The best thing about reading

To be out of your own head and into the world of the book.

What are you reading right now?

Una Cruickshank’s The chthonic cycle. This is a very timely and thought-provoking collection of essays, and I love its prose.

First Things by Harry Ricketts ($35, Te Herenga Waka University Press); And The Blue Suede Shoes of Richie Benaud: The Story of a Classic by David Kynaston and Harry Ricketts ($50, Bloomsbury) is available for purchase from Unity Books.