Clancy Martin

Clancy Martin is the author of the just-released How to Sell (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). A Canadian, he is an associate professor and chair of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He edited The Philosophy of Deception, which will be out from Oxford University Press this summer. He publishes in Harper’s, The London Review of Books, NOON, Ethics, McSweeney’s, and many other places. Please watch for Love, Lies, and Marriage, out from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux next year.


what are you reading now

Anna Karenina. For about the twentieth time. And Stendhal’s On Love.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Tristam Shandy. Read it years ago, but need to reread it soon. Presently rereading Inferno, but only ten pages in. Also, Paradise Lost, another reread from fifteen years or so ago. Bleak House, another old must-reread.


last book to make you laugh out loud

Deb Olin Unferth’s Vacation


book you borrowed and never returned

I’m pretty good about returning them. Can’t think of one, honestly. Some dumb book of philosophy, no doubt. (Those are the ones you forget to return, the dumb ones.)


most devastating novel

Hunger or Journey to the End of the Night. Two of the best books ever written, hands down.


best book you’ve read so far this year

2666


most scribble-ridden book in your collection

Beyond Good and Evil


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

Matthew Barney’s Decalogue


best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology

Pushcart


collected stories of

Kafka or Chekhov


if you could subscribe to only one literary journal

NOON


best thing you’ve read online recently

Anything by Olivia Judson or Deb Olin Unferth


most anticipated upcoming release

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon


recommended reading list:


Contemporary Avant-Garde Writers


- Deb Olin Unferth

- Diane Williams

- Christine Schutt

- Tao Lin

- Wells Tower

- Rebecca Curtis

- Barry Hannah

- Lydia Davis