Lee Child, “Moby-Dick,” and Other Summer Reads

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Lee Child, “Moby-Dick,” and Other Summer Reads"

The New Yorker Radio Hour – August 10, 2018
Host: David Remnick | A co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

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Overview

This episode explores the joys of summer reading—those books that offer escape, nostalgia, or a new lens on the world. Host David Remnick and a diverse group of New Yorker contributors share their favorite summer reads, from classic American novels to contemporary thrillers, beloved plays, evocative cookbooks, and childhood paperbacks. A centerpiece is Remnick’s in-depth interview with international bestseller Lee Child about the creation of Jack Reacher and the art (and business) of writing thrillers. The episode concludes with a personal essay on falling in love with reading—for pizza.

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Favorite Summer Reads: The Urge to Escape

With Amanda Petrusich and David Remnick
[00:18–03:43]

• Amanda Petrusich, reporting from Battery Park, describes a quintessential New York summer malaise, a "burning desire to flee this island."

• Summer, she says, sets up a yearly urge to escape, which she often satisfies by rereading favorite books, especially "The Great Gatsby" and "Moby-Dick."

• She finds in Melville's opening, with Ishmael's yearning to head to sea, a reflection of New York's blend of love and frustration.

• Quote:

  "I love the kind of, you know, that sort of New York frustration, that New York anxiety, where you love this town, but it is slowly driving you insane at the same time. I think Melville understood that. I think he was kind of a New Yorker in his blood." – Amanda Petrusich [01:38]

• Petrusich reads the iconic first paragraph of "Moby-Dick" to capture this sense of escape.

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Lee Child on Writing, Escape, and Jack Reacher

Interview with David Remnick
[03:43–19:22]

Lee Child’s Unlikely Path to Bestsellerdom

• David Remnick shares how summer for him means reaching for lighter, page-turner novels—particularly Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series.
• Child (real name: Jim Grant) describes being fired in his late 30s from television in England due to cost-cutting, marking the end of his first career because “they could get recent graduates to do the work for a quarter of the price.” [06:30–06:44]
• Confronted with a new start, Child aimed to remain in entertainment and took a leap into writing thrillers.

Inventing Jack Reacher: The Anti-Soap Opera

• Child deliberately chose to create a series hero who was nothing like most recurring protagonists:

  "Let's do the anti soap opera... there's only one character, there's no repertory cast surrounding him. ...So it was really a study in loneliness, alienation, in a way." – Lee Child [09:29–09:44]

• Reacher had to be American—only "the wide open spaces" of America fit the mythic, wandering knight archetype:

  "You can't do that in Britain. Britain is too small... there's no mystery about it. America has the frontier feel." – Lee Child [10:01–10:34]

On Writing Process

• Child writes one book a year, always starting September 1st, with no outline and little research—even for technical subjects.
• He relies on organic storytelling, sculpting the story as he goes.
• On facing the blank page each year:

  "Half my mind is impending doom... Finally I've been found out. ...And then I think, well, wait a minute. You felt like that for the last 20 books." – Lee Child [11:34–12:17]

• He claims he never has to scrap more than a few words, not pages—his process is fluid, not rigid.

Reader Expectations & The Art of the Page-turner

• With millions of readers, Child is conscious of pleasing both “expert readers” and “the one book a year person.”

  "A reacher book sells every nine seconds." – Lee Child [15:58] "Their biggest compliment that they can pay you is they will say, 'I loved your book. I finished it.' ...They feel that it's their achievement." – Lee Child [17:12–17:13]

• The key, he says, is the rhythm—“the book has got to be a locomotive that drives people through without being noticeably such.” [17:35]

Will Reacher Ever Retire?

• Child insists he’ll leave Reacher while the character is still fresh and avoid overstaying, unlike some TV shows or athletes.

  "I do not want Reacher to become an embarrassing old character..." – Lee Child [17:38] "If I leave Reacher, I would retire completely... Retirement is a phase of life that I'm keenly looking forward to." – Lee Child [18:07, 18:19]

On Unread Masterpieces

• Child confesses he’s never read Jane Austen and has a backlog of Russian, Flaubert, and undiscovered books waiting for him.

  "I could probably read her in the evenings after I finished writing Reacher, but that would be quite a contrast." – Lee Child [19:13]

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Escapism through Plays: Eugene O’Neill in Brooklyn

Vincent Cunningham shares
[20:17–25:07]

• Vincent Cunningham, staff writer, finds prose overwhelming in the summer; prefers reading plays for their rhythm and sound.

• He singles out Eugene O’Neill’s “Beyond the Horizon,” noting recurring archetypes—"brilliant and anguished" O'Neill figures—always close to tragedy.

  "The imperative of reading a play is that you’re supposed to be hearing it right, not reading it. So it’s more rhythmic, it’s more about sound..." – Vincent Cunningham [20:32]

• Reading plays becomes a personal, creative dollhouse—assembling character, sound, and movement in his imagination.

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Cookbooks as Escapist Reading

With Helen Rosner
[25:23–33:17]

• Food correspondent Helen Rosner reads cookbooks for their narrative voice and escapism—both geographic ("Thai Street Food") and temporal ("Living and Eating" by John Pawson and Annie Bell).

• She demonstrates making a strawberry fool—her favorite summer dessert—from Pawson’s minimalist cookbook, admiring the writerly personality even in instructions for dishwashers.

  "I love cookbooks that have voice, right? Where you can tell that someone who wrote the recipes or compiled them isn’t just trying to be some anonymous authority figure..." – Helen Rosner [27:49]

• The process is half reading, half tactile pleasure; taste is a "bookmark for our sensory memories."

  "If you only make [Strawberry Fool] in the summer, then it becomes a dish that reminds you of summer forever." – Helen Rosner [32:29]

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Falling in Love with Reading—for Pizza

Essay by Karen Russell
[34:03–38:59]

• Karen Russell recounts childhood in the “Book It” program, where reading any 10 books earned a free Pizza Hut pizza.

• The commercial incentive made reading guilt-free and ignited nocturnal adventures through Terry Brooks’ Shannara series—despite disapproval from adults who preferred Austen.

  "It turns out that there is no greater pleasure than reading for pizza. No longer do you feel guilty about eschewing the real world. Now you have an unassailable American motivation. You’re a breadwinner, literally." – Karen Russell [34:21]

• As a child, she learns to fudge her reading log for socially acceptable books but continues her love affair with fantasy.

• Reflects (with gentle nostalgia and pride) on today’s young readers, unashamed in their magic-loving tastes.

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Memorable Quotes

• On the urge to escape:
  “I think we are all sort of overcome by a kind of burning desire to flee this island, to go somewhere sort of cool and free and open.” – Amanda Petrusich [00:46]
• On thrillers’ universal appeal:
  “The book has got to be a locomotive that drives people through without being noticeably such.” – Lee Child [17:35]
• On reading as a reward:
  “It turns out that there is no greater pleasure than reading for pizza.” – Karen Russell [34:21]
• On cookbooks:
  “The art of writing a cookbook that has personality is really just... the most magical thing.” – Helen Rosner [27:58]

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Episode Flow / Key Timestamps

• Escape and summer longing – [00:18]
• Amanda Petrusich on "Moby-Dick" – [01:38]
• David Remnick: Jack Reacher as a summer read – [03:43]
• Lee Child Interview: writing process and myth – [05:16–19:22]
• Vincent Cunningham reads O’Neill – [20:17–25:07]
• Helen Rosner: escapist cooking and strawberry fool – [25:23–33:17]
• Karen Russell: Book It and reading-for-pizza – [34:03–38:59]

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Tone and Style

The episode blends personal nostalgia, wit, and intellectual curiosity. Each contributor conveys a love for a particular genre—not out of snobbery but from genuine delight, whether it’s highbrow classics, brisk thrillers, or mid-century cookbooks. The interviews, readings, and essays are frank and often humorous, reflecting summer’s longing for both rest and adventure. The treatment of each book—classic or popular—is deeply affectionate and free of pretense.

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For more on the authors, stories, and recipes mentioned, visit newyorker.com.

Transcript

[A]

From one World Trade center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of the New Yorker and WNYC studios.

[B]

Good morning, New York. It's a horrible day. I would say the temperature is cresting maybe 80 degrees, but is perhaps even hotter than that by now. I think the expected high for today is somewhere in the 90s.

[C]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This is staff writer Amanda Petrasich, reporting from Battery park on the very southern tip of New York, one of the few places in the city where you can find a reliable breeze.

[B]

I think we are all sort of overcome by a kind of burning desire to flee this island, to go somewhere sort of cool and free and open. And I think it kind of takes hold of every New Yorker in her bones, I would say beginning in July and perhaps in not letting up until Labor Day, which is just a sort of desperate urge to be anywhere but here. Sorry, it's not very New York friendly. I apologize to New York for insulting her. I do love this town.

[C]

Don't we all? But when you just need to get away and a boat ride or even a subway trip to the beach isn't in the cards, there's always a another kind of escape. Today on the show, we're going to share some of our very favorite summer reads.

[B]

When summertime comes, I find myself almost inevitably rereading books that I've loved. I reread the Great Gatsby almost every Fourth of July. I find myself rereading Moby Dick very often in the summer, in part because it captures that kind of summertime feeling, that wanting to escape, wanting to be somewhere cool and open. I love the first paragraph proper of Moby Dick, which again, feels this is such a sort of New Yorker sentiment. I love the kind of, you know, that sort of New York frustration, that New York anxiety, where you love this town, but it is slowly driving you insane at the same time. I think Melville understood that. I think he was kind of a New Yorker in his blood. Just that kind of lonesomeness, that yearning, that desire to sort of get out and see the world, to open your life up to more possibilities than you can find here in your office building. Call me Ishmael. Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation whenever I find myself Going grim about the mouth. Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking people's hats off, then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

[C]

Now with due respect to Amanda and her friend Ishmael, when summer rolls around I tend to reach for something okay, sometimes a little shorter, a little lighter and with more fist fights. For years I've been devouring a series of books about an ex military cop named Jack Reacher. Huge, hard nosed, a quiet stranger who wanders into town and finds trouble inevitably. And it's been a lot to devour because there are now 23 Jack Reacher novels, including an advanced copy I just scored of the next one. The Reacher books have sold more then 100 million copies in 40 plus languages. And there's even a film franchise starring Tom Cruise. This all American tough guy is the creation of one Lee Child. Child never served in the army. He doesn't seem prone to beating up anyone. He's not even American. Lee Child was born in England. He was named James Grant. He graduated law school before embarking on a 20 year career in television. All before beginning his hugely successful career as a novelist. Lee Child is an absolute delight to have you here. You've made so many summers come alive for me reading you, so I'm full of questions and naturally I want to ask you about the way this all began. You were working as an executive in 1995 and you got fired and decided to hell with it, I'm going to work for myself and become a superstar writer of thrillers.

[D]

Well, it wasn't quite that linear. I was a television director and very happy where I was. It was in Britain during what in retrospect looks like a golden age of drama is well remembered. I mean my company did Jewel in the Crown, Brideshead Revisited, Prime Suspect, just some really terrific shows. But it was also a fabulous news station, documentary station. It was really the height of the height. And then broadcasting in Britain, like I think everywhere in the world got shook up, particularly by Rupert Murdoch's influence. And the whole thing started to fall apart.

[C]

You lost your job because of Rupert Murdoch?

[D]

Yeah, pretty much. I mean Rupert Murdoch wanted to bring his satellite service to Britain and in order to do that he needed to attack and weaken the Terrestrial services, the BBC and the independent broadcasters. And it was a pretty transparent deal with the Thatcher government. You know, you let me do this, help me out a little bit, and I will support you in my papers and on the air.

[C]

Why did you, and you were named Jim Grant still, then why did you get fired?

[D]

Because I was 39 years old, an expensive veteran with a big salary and benefits, a pension and all that kind of thing. And they discovered that they could get recent graduates to do the work for a quarter of the price.

[C]

So now what made you believe that you could walk out the door, sit down, change your name and become a great writer of thrillers?

[D]

Well, I didn't necessarily believe it. I just thought that at that age, at that stage of your life, this is probably the last chance to try something new, to make a big break. I did not want to leave the world of entertainment. I'm just totally in love with that idea. I mean, you very kindly mentioned you read my book and enjoy it. And I just absolutely love that transaction that I can do something that somebody else is going to enjoy. And television satisfied that for a long time. But when I left television, I wanted to stay in that world, basically. So the question was, how can I stay? What can I do that will supply me with the same feeling?

[C]

So you did a particular thing? Not just one, a series of particularities. First of all, you invented Jack Reacher and stuck with him. He's an American, you're not. He's a complete loner. Malcolm Gladwell and others have compared him to a kind of cowboy. It's like the form of a Western. A man who wanders into a town. In his case, hitchhikes in, no change of clothes. His only possession is a toothbrush. He senses trouble and complications begin. Former military policeman. So how did you end vent him? Why is he an American?

[D]

Well, it was a whole batch of reasons that happily all pointed in the same direction. First of all, you know, really the hardest thing about being a writer, or I suppose an artist of any kind, is that you have to believe several different things, some of which are contradictory, but you have to believe them all 100%, completely, wholeheartedly. And of course I believe that this is an art, it's a craft, it's a joy, it's creative, all that good stuff. But it's also a job, it's a business. And so I had a vague eye on the business side of it, which was that so many other people, in fact everybody else that was writing a series was writing essentially a soap opera with a Fixed location. It would either be location based or employment based or both. And the hero would have probably colleagues and a superior he didn't like and subordinates that were difficult. He would have possibly a partner, an apartment, a favorite bar, a favorite restaurant, neighbors, the whole thing. The classic soap opera, which I'm in no way denigrating. I worked in television, I made my living on soap operas for nearly two decades. They're incredibly powerful and actually quite sophisticated form of narrative. But everybody was doing it, so I thought, well, let's not do that. Let's do the anti soap opera.

[C]

Strip it down.

[D]

Yeah, where there's only one character, there's no repertory cast surrounding him. There's one character, there's no location. He can be anywhere, he has no job, so he can do anything. So it was really a study in loneliness, alienation, in a way. And that had to be in America because Malcolm Gladwell talks about cowboys. Well, yeah, that's fine, but where did cowboys come from? The cowboy myth is essentially a development of a medieval myth from Europe, the knight era.

[C]

The knight?

[D]

Yeah, the knight who has somehow transgressed against the court and has been banished. Same thing in Japan, Japanese culture, the ronin. Exactly the same thing. A samurai who's been disowned by his master and sentenced to wander the land doing good deeds. So it's really that tradition, and you can't do that in Britain. Britain is too small. It is too densely populated. There are no empty areas. There's no mystery about it. America has the frontier feel.

[C]

Wandering into the Cotswolds wouldn't work in the same way as Nebraska.

[D]

No, it totally wouldn't. Because everybody in the Cotswolds knows your business immediately and everybody knows everything. There's no possibility of hidden secrets. It has to be the wide open spaces now.

[C]

I can't believe you write the way you've described this. You sit down every year, it's September 1st. You don't sit down with an outline. You don't do research. Even though some of your novels seem to indicate, you know, a knowledge of opioids or a knowledge of this of place. And then you just start and off you go. That's a very strange way to write any kind of novel, much less it is what I would have thought. I would have thought a Jack Reacher novel would be pretty heavily plotted and you'd have charts on the wall.

[D]

Absolutely not. Nothing on the wall. And you know, it's summert acutely aware that September 1st is approaching. And I'm thinking, I have zero idea.

[C]

How do you feel about that? Is it an impending doom or.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, half my mind is impending doom. The gas tank is empty. Finally I've been found out. Finally it's all going to fall apart. And then I think, well, wait a minute. You felt like that for the last 20 books, and so you've managed them before. You can manage this one. For me, it's always about the story. And I want the story to be organic, naturally unfolding. And I feel that if I wrote an outline, it would be a rather artificial structure. I'd be forcing the story into an artificial route that it probably didn't want to take. So I just start in the beginning, and I hope to get a good first sentence or a good first paragraph. And then I think, all right, now what happens? What happens now?

[C]

Do you ever go 75 pages in and it's a bust and you have to start again?

[D]

No, never.

[C]

How is that possible?

[D]

Well, two reasons. First of all, that would be very inefficient. It would drive me mad to do that. And I can usually tell before about seven words. If I'm heading down a bad track, I can tell pretty early. And so I sometimes delete seven words. But that hurts quite a lot, I'll tell you. But it's really about one thing leads from another in a very organic way. For instance, the new book, past tense. I wrote the first sentence and. Or the first paragraph, anyway, and there were two things in it. One I had mentioned Maine. Reacher has to start from somewhere. So he's in Maine for the summer. Now he's planning to head south for the winter.

[C]

He gets to New Hampshire, right?

[D]

He only gets as far as New Hampshire, but he's planning to go all the way south to Southern California. Like the birds migrate. And I have a pretty mellifluous sentence there in the beginning about the migration of birds and typical species. And I just wrote that thinking, okay, this is a good place to start. And then immediately, first of all, the bird watching. Well, years ago in one of the books, it was mentioned that Reach's father was a bird watcher. Because I wanted the contrast between a pretty vicious Marine soldier and his hobby, which was bird watching. I found that an interesting contrast. So in the back of my mind, okay, why have I started this with a reference to birds? Maybe this book ought to be about Reacher's father. You know, I start on September 1st because that's the anniversary of when I started the very first book. So it's a sentimental day to start. I start on 1st September and work every available day until the book is finished, which is usually around the next March because a lot of other things get in the way.

[C]

Oh, you do leave your desk. You'll leave town. You'll.

[D]

I have to. You know, I've got family stuff. They want to do Christmas and all those kind of things.

[C]

It's horrible, isn't it? Yeah.

[D]

They drag you away.

[C]

Now, this is one of the most amazing things. At a certain point, I think you were writing. Make me an English academic named Andy Martin sat there with you in your study and watched you write a novel.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

He was 30 cups of coffee a day. Like Balzac.

[D]

Yeah. Possibly more. I think my record is mid-30s mugs of coffee, not just little cups. You know, let's get serious about this.

[C]

That's impressive. You have an impressive stomach.

[D]

Yeah. Andy was. It happened very short notice. He was a rather freewheeling academic from Cambridge University. And literally, days before I started that novel, he came up with that idea. And probably if I'd had longer to think about it, I would have said no. But because time was short, it was my 20th book. I just thought, let's do something different. And to a certain extent, I wanted to. To have it on record. Not for me personally, necessarily, but for all of us in this genre, because there is a lot of cheap talk about how it's somehow easy to write these books, that there are various terms used, crank them out and so on, which is actually very much the opposite of the truth.

[C]

But even the way you describe it, it sounds easy. You sit down on September 1st, you don't write a second or third or 50th draft, no outline. So what is the difficulty? Describe that.

[D]

Well, really, the difficulty is with a readership the size of a successful genre writer's readership is.

[C]

And what does this kill me? Go ahead and kill me. What is the scale of your readership?

[D]

Well, millions of people globally, around the world, A reacher book sells every nine seconds. So there's a lot of people reading them. And you cannot look at that as a monolithic mass, because with an audience that size, they're very striated. They're very different. At the center, you've got the expert readers who just read all the time, like Malcolm Gladwell. You know, mine is not the only book that he reads that week. Obviously he reads constantly. So do a lot of people, and they have to be satisfied. But on the very far edges of the audience are the people that read one book a year on their vacation on the beach. That's all they will read. And you've got to satisfy both those readers and everybody in between.

[C]

You feel them out there. You feel that immense audience.

[D]

Yeah, because you meet them. You know, you meet extremely unlikely people that are fans, and then you meet people who are clearly the one book a year person. And touchingly, their biggest compliment that they can pay you is they will say, I loved your book. I finished it. Which is a. A huge achievement. They feel that it's their achievement.

[C]

It's an unusual act.

[D]

Yeah. They finished a book, they're very satisfied. They're happy with themselves and of course they're happy with the book because the book has aided them to do that. And how do you do that? The real skill, and I think the skill that Andy Martin observed day to day is the rhythms of the book. The book has got to be a locomotive that drives people through without being noticeably such.

[C]

Finally, will Jack Reacher ever leave us or leave you?

[D]

Yeah. I'm fascinated with the whole showbiz thing of leave them wanting more. Don't be the embarrassing guy that sticks around two seasons too long. We see that all the time in shows on television. We see it with athletes. You've got to pick your time to go. And I do not want Reacher to become an embarrassing old character that's bought kind of out of habit or sentimentality.

[C]

So you might leave him behind and write about someone or something else?

[D]

No, I would leave him behind and retire completely. Do not forget, I'm from Europe. I have no work ethic. I want to. Retirement is a phase of life that I'm keenly looking forward to.

[C]

Are you?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

What would you do on September 1st?

[D]

Read. That's the only thing I resent about writing is the time it takes away from reading that I would. I mean, literally, I've got rooms full of books just stacking up, just waiting to be read.

[C]

What's the biggest masterpiece that's just sitting there staring at you and saying, you have not read me?

[D]

I've never read Jane Austen, you know, which is shocking for an English person, but the Russians of the 19th century, maybe Flaubert, stuff like that. And then, of course, the fabulous thing about books is you don't know what the classics are. There's something sitting there in my living room right now that could be the best read of my life. And I don't know what it is yet because I haven't tried it.

[C]

Well, Lee Child, I'm incredibly grateful to you, but don't leave Jack Reacher too soon. Okay? I honestly think you can squeeze In Jane Austen. Somehow.

[D]

I could probably read her in the evenings after I finished writing Reacher, but that would be quite a contrast.

[C]

Lee Chow, thank you very much.

[D]

Thank you.

[C]

Lee Child's next book, Past Tense, is due out in November. And if that seems too far off, I'll remind you that there are 22 other Jack Reacher novels waiting for you right now.

[E]

I don't know how hot it is outside, but it's always hot in here. Let's turn on the fan.

[C]

Welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. We're talking today about the escapist joys of a good summer read. And from his un air conditioned living room in Brooklyn, this is staff writer Vincent Cunningham and his idea of escapism.

[E]

I guess it's true that summer is the site of a lot of self imposed pressure for me. It seems like someone who writes or, or wants to embark on creative projects. Summer always feels like, oh, I could do it in the summer. And so it's possible that this is why I find writing hard in the summer, I find thinking hard in the summer, and I find it hard to digest prose in the summer. So plays work for me in that way. Mostly because the imperative of reading a play is that you're supposed to be hearing it right, not reading it. So it's more rhythmic, it's more about sound, like I read it. Like almost, almost like I would read poetry. One of my favorite playwrights at all is Eugene o'. Neill. And the way that I've worked my way through him is to basically only read him in the summer. So now I'm reading one of his earliest, one of o' Neill's earliest plays, beyond the Horizon. I know nothing about it. And so now while I'm supposed to be doing other things, I am reading that the hero is this character, Robert Mayo, who's sitting, reading a book and like, good luck staging or casting for this. He is a tall, slender young man of 23. There is a touch of the poet about him expressed in his high forehead and wide dark eyes. His features are delicate and refined, leaning to weakness in the mouth and chin. Now like whenever I read stuff like that, I always like have in mind like some casting director, like looking through guys. It's like, who's got a touch of the poet about him expressed in their high forehead? I mean, you can't do that. And he knows he can't do that. But this is why I, I feel like it's a gift to the people who read plays, not as directors or producers who just read them at home. And here's his way of sort of gifting something to them. Every o' Neil play, once you've read a couple, everyone seems basically familiar because there's always at the middle of it. And this is definitely going to be Robert Mayo. I'm totally guessing each one of them has an o' Neil figure who's just like brilliant and anguished and sort of wants to die. And there's a way in which, you know, every o' Neil play worth anything to me is sort of aimed toward tragedy. So Robert Mayo's brother Andrew comes along the road from the right, returning from his work in the fields. He is 27 years old, an opposite type to Robert husky, sun bronzed, handsome in a large featured, manly fashion, a son of the soil, intelligent in a shrewd way but with nothing of the intellectual about him. In other words, he's not Eugene o', Neill, right? Here's what Andrew says. Hey there. Robert turns with a start, seeing who it is. He smiles. Gosh, you do take the prize for daydreaming. And I see you've toted one of the old books along with you want to bust your eyesight reading in this light, Robert? Robert Mayo glances at the book in his hand with a rather shame faced air. I wasn't reading just then, Andy, Andrew says. No, but you have been. Shucks, you never get any sense, Rob. He crosses the ditch and sits on the fence near his brother. What is it this time? Poetry? I'll bet. He reaches for the book. Let me see. Most weird, anxiety driven things are just about starting. And then you start. You get the sound of these characters, their voices, their. It starts to fill in, right? The way they move their bodies, things like this, the way they walk. They would walk across the stage. It gets into your head and then you're kind of off to the races, but it's like you're putting this like dollhouse together. It just seems like fun and it feels like the beginning of something.

[C]

Staff writer Vincent Cunningham reading Eugene o' Neill this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

[F]

We are standing in my home kitchen on a hot summer day looking at my cookbook bookshelf along one wall of my kitchen.

[C]

Helen Rosner is a food correspondent for the New Yorker, and if you ask what she's reading lately, she's liable to pull out one of her cookbooks.

[F]

I mean, I think a lot of people talk about reading cookbooks in bed and that's not quite what I do. I like to just sort of sit down on a couch and read with them. And I mean, just looking at my bookshelf right now, the Momofuku cookbook, which is just one of my all time favorites, is so easy to sit down and read. And yeah, I mean, I think that reading cookbooks for escapism is fundamental to their appeal. And the escapism can be geographic. You know, reading a book like Thai Street Food over there on that shelf is beautiful. I mean, it's tourism without leaving your sofa. But it can also be chronological tourism, temporal tourism. You know, reading these older books or reading books that are chronicles of past places. So today we're going to make a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. It's called Living and Eating. And it's by the famous British minimalist architect John Pawson, writing with Annie Bell, who's a British food writer. And the thing that's wonderful about this is so John Pawson, as an architect is famous for he does like Calvin Klein stores, you know, he's an ultra minimalist. And the book opens and closes with these extended chapters that are beautifully bossy. You know, he talks about how a kitchen should be designed. His section about dishwashers. I mean, listen to this. Is there anything to be said for washing dishes by hand? There may be some individuals who find washing up therapeutic, but probably only on occasional basis. The main requisites are that the machine should function quietly and offer environmentally friendly washing features, including modest water usage. What cookbook has that? What cookbook has instructions on how to buy the right dishwasher? And the answer is a cookbook that's been written by an architect who thinks about the kitchen as a holistic machine. So we're going to make one of the desserts, and it's actually so we're going to make strawberry Fool. Fool, like idiot fool is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite desserts to make, and especially in the summer, at its core, it's something creamy, whether it's a custard or whipped cream swirled together with fresh fruit or fruit compote. But the version that Pawson and Belle have in this book is a uniform Pepto Bismol pink strawberry fool where it's all been blended together. And they also set it with gelatin, which is in some fool recipes. But I have never actually made a gelatin based fool. So in so many ways this is a brand new fool for me. But I guess it makes sense for a minimalist like John Pawson to want something that is uniform in texture and uniform in color. So let's try it. So the first thing the recipe says that we need to do is steep the cream with lemon and vanilla. So according to the recipe, we are going to let this simmer until it's reduced by a third. Okay. So now we really should just wait a little bit, but we can do the fruit. I love cookbooks that have voice, right? Where you can tell that someone who wrote the recipes or compiled them isn't just trying to be some anonymous authority figure, but is really speaking from a place of who they are. You know, finding writerly voice can be hard regardless of what you're writing. And I think it's especially hard when you're writing recipes because there's such a technical aspect to it. You know, you can't editorialize too much in the ingredients or the instructions because you need the dish to turn out. But the art of writing a cookbook that has personality is really just. It's the most magical thing. Oh, my God. Okay, so I'm gonna set it off the heat. So I've sliced the tops off of all our strawberries and thrown them in my blender. And then we're taking that lemon that we zested, and we're juicing it in there. Time to blend. So let's add our delicate into our cream. And now we'll dump in the berry mixture, and we have a bowl full of this beautiful Pepto Bismol pink strawberry and cream concoction. Okay, now we're gonna put this in the fridge for a little while for the gelatin to set, and we'll check on it.

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The New Yorker's Helen Rosner. We'll check back in with her after that strawberry fool has had time to set. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. I'm David Remnick, and welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. Earlier, we got food correspondent Helen Rosner to pull out a book from her impressive cookbook collection and make something that she considers a quintessential summer dish. So Helen whipped up a dessert called a fool, a strawberry fool, which is not something that most Americans make or have even heard of. I haven't. And it's been in the fridge chilling.

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Okay, we put our strawberry fool in the fridge, and let's see how it's doing. Okay, so we have a wobbly bowl of strawberry fool. It's not super firm. It doesn't feel like jello. You're not going to be able to, you know, cut it into cubes. But the idea is that it should roughly hold its form. If you're scooping it out. So this is normally where I would glop a huge amount of whipped cream on the top because I feel like you can never have too much whipped cream. But they want us to use white chocolate. So white chocolate, we will use a. You can grate chocolate on a microplane or even just a box grater. And it kind of makes a beautiful snow that's kind of like a Parmesan cheese visual. It's so ugly. I mean, it's beautiful. It's beautiful in that kind of silly homemade way, which is the perfect way for things to be beautiful. I mean, this literally looks like a picture from one of those horrible mid century cookbooks. It was all sort of shot in lurid Kodachrome. And there's something very lurid about this, you know, this vivid pink and the dark red and the fluffy white. I mean, look at that. Oh my God, it's so good. I'm gonna eat all of this. You know, taste is such a powerful bookmark for our sensory memories. You know, you take a bite of something and like Proust madeleine, you're transported into the past. And you know, we could make Strawberry fool any time of year, but if you only make it in the summer, then it becomes a dish that reminds you of summer forever. Oh, I love this. I just spilled on myself. It's that good. My shirt wanted some too.

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The New Yorker's Helen Rosner in her kitchen with a fool. You can find all of Helen's writing, including a recipe for a savory tomato pound [e-mail] that's another recipe I can't imagine anytime but in the summer. We're going to close today with a story about falling in love with reading. Karen Russell is the author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove and many stories published in the New Yorker. She often uses elements of fantasy and complex stories about complex people. And she wrote an essay for us about the beginning of her journey as a writer, which started at pizza hut.

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It's 1990, you are 10 years old, and Pizza Hut has launched a program called Book it to promote reading. For every 10 books you read, you get a certificate for a free one topping pizza.

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Now, for your information, we didn't make that up. Pizza Hut's Book it program is still going strong.

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It turns out that there is no greater pleasure than reading for pizza. No longer do you feel guilty about eschewing the real world. Now you have an unassailable American motivation. You're a breadwinner, literally for days at a Stretch. You dissolve into Terry Brooks's the Sword of Shannera series, a sort of Tolkien spinoff, Middle Earth for Cold War Kids. You read in the bathroom in the dry tub so the light doesn't wake your sister. Water lisps out of the faucet onto your pajamas. You clock into the Four Lands at 10pm and emerge at dawn with purple night shift bags under your eyes. You're sore from flying over Skull Kingdom on the back of a winged rock, aghast at the carnage in the mountain. Freemen are striking back against the Federation across the blue divide. The Shadow Inner Gathering Armageddon looms. You earn another cheese pizza at Pizza Hut. Your younger siblings drink fountain soda from red cups, bite into Cartoon Ratoon yellow mozzarella, sit back with your arms folded. Get a refill, dad, you encourage like some magnanimous king. Everything is going aces until the waitress, who like a raccoon combines indifference and nosiness, flips through the Bookit certificate. 1. The sword of Shana. 2. The wish song of Chenera. 3. The elf stones of Chenara. Your dad laughs and makes a joke about the gallstones of Cheniera. Last month she read Pride and Prejudice, your mom says, then hustles you toward the car. In the car, your mom asks to see one of the Shannera books. A young man who looks like Jodie Foster dressed as Robin Hood is holding a big glowing rock. That's Will Omsford, scion of Shannaera, you explain. He and Amberly have to rekindle the seed of the Elkris, a tree that produces this sort of ozone layer of magic. It's deteriorating faster than the elves can say chlorofluorocarbon. Your mom seems to have stopped listening. Are these for school? She asks hopefully. Last month you humped around a water stained copy of Pride and Prejudice and nobody said boo to you. In that book, some British sisters vie to get their dance cards punched in the Shanara books. A nuclear holocaust has wiped out almost every living thing, and the Omsford siblings have rediscovered a burning green magic germinating under the world, the past waiting to be reborn as future. The Elf Stones is so much better than Pride and Prejudice. Yet it has been made clear to you that the Austen book is a classic, while Terry Brooks is a hack. So give up on the honor system. You want your pizza. So you start filling in the bookit certificate with all manner of school approved literature. Little Women, Little Men, Stewart Little in the Dead of night. Keep reading Terry Brooks until you're out of books. Years later, watch a new generation of readers beam stories about adolescent wizards and eloquent unicorns directly onto their Kindles. They sit on the bus blabbing openly to one another about hippogriffs. Pixies. Feel a curmudgeonly awe at their cheerful indifference to your or any adult eavesdropper's opinion. Watch approvingly as they walk down the sidewalk with their secret wings spreading above them, their shadows in the open, these magic lovers, these children of the future.

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Karen Russell we recently published her story Orange World, which you can [e-mail] that's it for this week. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. Until then, be sure to check us out on Twitter ewyorkerradio. Stay cool and happy reading.

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The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Cuadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Baron, Emily Bottin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Jill Deboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Louie Mitchell, Sarah Nix, Myth Lee Rao, Stephen Valentino, and Richard Yeh, with help from Michelle Moses, Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Torina Endowment Fund.