Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
On the one day of the year that a small press in Minneapolis accepted unsolicited manuscripts, Hernan Diaz sent in what would become the Pulitzer-Prize nominated In the Distance, now being re-released by Riverhead, the same imprint that published Diaz’s Trust, which won the Pulitzer Prize, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a President Barack Obama favorite of 2022. (The title came to him on the elliptical.) It is currently in development as a limited series for HBO directed by Todd Haynes and produced by Kate Winslet (he will serve as executive producer). Diaz also wrote Borges, between History and Eternity. He earned a master’s at King’s College London and a comparative literature PhD from NYU (living in a somewhat derelict industrial space in Williamsburg and attending seminars by Jacques Derrida.)
Among his other distinctions: the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Saroyan International Prize, the Cabell Award, the Prix Page America, the New American Voices Award, the Kirkus Prize, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim, New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Rockefeller Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, the Ingmar Bergman Estate, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation.
The Buenos Aires-born, Stockholm-raised, Brooklyn-based NYT-bestselling author writes in longhand with a 20-year-old Montblanc Meisterstück fountain pen; was interviewed by bibliophiles Natalie Portman and Dua Lipa; wrote a first novel that has never been published; and doesn’t write multiple drafts.
Likes: Libraries (Othmer Library at Center for Brooklyn History and NYPL, where he was a fellow, are favorites); John Coltrane; walking as a way to solve writing problems; loners.
Not so much: The word “fan,” show-and-tell novels.
Is: A grammar nerd.
Isn’t: Superstitious.
Has: Amassed a collection of books on punk rock.
Has never: Hosted a dinner party. Entertain the idea of reading one of his book recs below.
The book that:
…made me weep uncontrollably:
More than weeping uncontrollably, I shed discreet tears several years ago at a sushi restaurant in Morningside Heights while finishing Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams.
…I recommend over and over again:
Joy Williams’s The Visiting Privilege. One of the best story collections ever.
…shaped my worldview:
Virginia Woolf taught me to see the world through language. George Eliot taught me to find what’s decent in every person or character. Henry James taught me to understand that the space separating people may also be what connects them. Surely, all this contributes to shaping a worldview. Do I need to choose one book by each? If so, let’s say To the Lighthouse, Middlemarch, and The Golden Bowl.
…I swear I’ll finish one day:
Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone. Actually, I hope I never finish it. It’s such a pleasure to pick up this collection of notebooks and open it up at random to any of its 2,500 brilliant pages.
…made me laugh out loud:
Pick a P. G. Wodehouse book. Any book. Also, The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.
…I’d like turned into a TV show:
Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
…I last bought:
Yesterday, I bought a copy of Yoko Ogawa’s Mina’s Matchbox at Community Bookstore, one of the best bookshops in the country.
…has the best title:
Anne Carson’s latest book is called Wrong Norma, which is a pretty great title.
…helped me become a better writer:
Every single book I read, even if I happen to loathe it, helps me become a better writer—I hope.
…I’ve reread the most:
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
…fills me with hope:
Several pieces in both series of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays.
…that holds the recipe to a favorite dish:
I love every recipe in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. And her genius on the page can always withstand my incompetence at the stove.
Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:
Library: the Stephen A. Schwarzman branch of the New York Public Library.
Bookstore: Three Lives, in New York. It’s cozy and exquisitely curated—not one superfluous book. And I could walk to Via Carota for all my meals.
Riza Cruz is an editor and writer based in New York.