4 vragen aan... Laura Wilson, auteur van The Writers

What book comforts you?

I have a little book of poetry, The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, given to me by my son to refresh my memory of poems I learned as a child as well as to inspire me to learn some new ones.

This collection reflects a spirt of adventure, the strength of love and family and the worlds of imagination and nature.

What is the last book you read that made you cry?

I began reading about the brutality, savagery and inhumanity of the Holocaust 3 years ago. Each of the 24 books I’ve read includes shocking accounts that bring me to tears. One book, by a Dutch writer I can’t seem to find now, described the premeditated cruelty of a family who made a black x on the street in front of their next- door neighbor’s house to alert the Nazis to the presence of Jews who had evaded persecution up to that night.

Someone lends you a time machine. What writer do you visit?

I’d like to meet Alice Munro, the great Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in 2013. She’s about 10 years older than I am, but our childhoods and upbringings are similar. I feel I know her and the people she writes about; I went to school with them or saw them in my small New England town. But the perfection of her prose, the subtle, concise way she writes about her characters is a skill I do not have. She is ill now, but I would like to go back to a time when she could have been photographed to include in this book. Her work means so much to me.

What do you like best about Athenaeum Bookstore?

I am grateful for Athenaeum Bookstore’s commitment to my book. I admire their enthusiasm and the effort they are making to help readers more fully appreciate the American and English books Athenaeum has chosen to feature.

Could you pinpoint the moment you decided to start writing this book?

In late fall of 2008, I met John Updike and liked him—and thought then I’d like to do a portrait of him. But I dithered around, and he died the January before I had the chance. Updike’s abrupt death prompted me to begin photographing writers in earnest. Over the course of twelve years, I was lucky enough to photograph some of the most influential writers of our time, women and men who will leave a lasting literary legacy. I chose each person for the quality of their work. As often as not, I had never seen a particular writer before we met. But as I began to edit the film, I saw immediately that, no matter how each one appeared to me at first, when they came before the camera, they all appeared exceptional. Their faces were full of meaning.

What is it that gives them such presence? How is it that writers, unlike any other group I’ve photographed, are so calmly centered, so seemingly free of anxiety? They seemed able to part the curtain of self-doubt. They have the ability to go beyond the “picture face” that most of us present to the camera, to dig into themselves to reveal something of the human predicament.