Kevin Powers: ‘I was ready to abandon Infinite Jest a thousand times’

The American author on falling in love with The Great Gatsby, being inspired by Dylan Thomas – and the memoir of a canoe trip in Texas he comes back to

My earliest reading memory
The deaths of Old Dan and Little Ann in Wilson Rawls’s Where the Red Fern Grows were etched into my being as a first grader in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

My favourite book growing up
Stephen King’s The Stand. I completely lost myself in the story. I don’t think I realised at the time what a rare gift it is to have that experience.

The book that changed me as a teenager
When I was 12 or 13, I wandered into the modest poetry section of our local used bookstore and was drawn to the cover art of Dylan Thomas’s Collected Poems. I flipped it open and read, “Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs …” I won’t pretend I was a sophisticated reader of poetry at the time, but the music was undeniable. I wrote my first attempt at poetry that night and knew from that moment I would chase that music for the rest of my life.

The writer who changed my mind
I read GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy when I was in my early 20s. His framing of tradition as democracy extended to the dead was something I’d never considered, and frankly, found quite persuasive. My politics didn’t change, but I discovered how essential it is to have your ideas challenged, and how foolish it is to believe your opinions are correct simply because you are the one who holds them.

The book that made me want to be a writer
F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, at school, when I was 15 or 16. I fell so deeply in love with the book that, and this is somewhat embarrassing to admit, I would type out sentences from it on my family’s old desktop computer just to see what it felt like.

The book or author I came back to
I had a friend in graduate school who was such an evangelist for David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest that he would give me pep talks each of the thousand times I was ready to abandon it. When I finally got to Don Gately’s portion of the narrative, the book completely opened up to me, and I now deeply admire it.

The book I reread
I moved to Texas in my 20s and was recommended John Graves’s Goodbye to a River, a memoir of a final canoe trip down the Brazos River before it was meant to be dammed up. The writing is exquisite. For me it’s the platonic ideal of a book as the record of a mind at work. I’ve reread it every year or two ever since.

The book I could never read again
Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel was another transformative work I read as a teenager. I’m afraid I wouldn’t like it if I read it again, and I don’t want to take that joy away from my 16-year-old self.

The book I discovered later in life
I read Pär Lagerkvist’s Barabbas only a few years ago, and it has become a touchstone for clarity in my own writing. There are scenes that are among the most deeply moving yet plainly told as anything I’ve ever read.

The book I am currently reading
I just finished Foster by Claire Keegan and immediately ordered everything she’s ever published.