Kevin Kwan on His Love of Classics (Even if He’s Still Never Read Middlemarch)

Kevin Kwan’s much anticipated new novel, Lies and Weddings, is out today, so we asked him a few questions about his favorite books to read, recommend, and give as gifts.

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Which books do you reread? 

Evelyn Waugh’s novels are a perennial favorite of mine, especially Brideshead Revisited and Decline and Fall. To me they just get deeper and funnier with each reading, and you really get to appreciate not only what a genius satirist he was, but also how beautiful his writing was and how he evoked a sense of place. I also love re-reading Dominick Dunne’s books. I read People Like Us when it was first released in the late 1980s, and his glamorous depictions of New York society was one of the things that lured me to move there myself.

After a few years of Manhattan living and encountering the sort of people he wrote about, I came to appreciate what an astute observer of human nature he was, and rereading the book helped me see that whole crowd in a whole new light. I feel the same way about An Inconvenient Woman, which is Dunne’s ode to Los Angeles. After living in LA for a while, I reread it and began to see the city on a whole other level. It revealed so much about the overlapping circles of influence and why this town operates in the unique way that it does. I recently read it again and learned yet another fascinating facet of Hollywood history—this time about a notorious murder.

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Name a classic you feel guilty about never having read?

Middlemarch by George Eliot. It has such an august reputation as one of the great works of British literature, and George Eliot’s story also adds to its fascination—how she had to write under the name of “George” to get published during that era. I see it on lists of favorite books of all the time, and so many friends have told me how wonderful it is, and since I love Austen and the Bronte sisters and Trollope it’s such a no-brainer for me, but for some reason I’ve just never gotten around to reading it. Now that I’m writing this, I feel compelled to set a goal of making this the book I read this summer!

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Which non-literary piece of culture could you not imagine your life without? 

I could definitely not live without art—from painting to sculpture to experimental performance art—I love all forms of visual arts. Before I became a writer, my first love was drawing and painting, and I actually moved to New York to go to art school and received a BFA in Photography. I spend much of my free time visiting galleries, museums, and artists’ studios. It’s a way to clear my mind after an intense session of writing, and watching other artists at work—seeing their process and gleaning the stories that come through their work also helps to inspire me in unexpected ways.

Last year, I went to see a Kehinde Wiley painting at the Huntington Museum in San Marino, California, and standing in the gallery, staring up at the magnificent portrait that he painted, I suddenly saw a connection and it inspired a pivotal scene in my new novel Lies and Weddings.

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What is your favorite book to give as a gift? 

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino is the book I most love to give. First of all, it’s a book you can give anyone—it cuts across age and culture and everyone I’ve ever given it to had fallen in love with it. It’s also the rare book where you can turn to any page and start reading—each page is a stand-alone chapter, but collectively they form the most incredible tale. You can just read one story per night before bed. It’s the ideal book to read before you begin to dream. Exquisite language.

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What’s a book you recommend to other writers? 

The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst. It’s especially meaningful to other writers because the story evolves around the life of a writer. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but Hollinghurst constructs a novel that is so ingenious, it manages to depict a writer’s legacy through the ages in the most astonishingly brilliant way. It is at once beautiful, poignant and terrifying.

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Lies and Weddings is available now.