Paulette Jiles

In spring 2007 Barnes & Noble interviewed Paulette Jiles, author of Stormy Weather and Enemy Women.

One Q & A:

What was the book that most influenced your life or your career as a writer?

Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye gives a clear and cogent analysis of the various sorts of imaginative narratives, among them the quest story. It does not assign value to any one type of story. I came upon Frye's The Well-Tempered Critic in college and loved it. It has the same sort of descriptive brilliance as Anatomy. It was a relief from the contemporary insistence that only the novel of psychological exploration was of literary value.

[Other influential books: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway; All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy]

In the same interview, Jiles named her twelve favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue