Andrew Miller: “DH Lawrence forced me to my feet – I was madly excited” | imaginary

My first memory is reading
I’m sitting on the couch with my mom as she reads Mabel the Whale by Patricia King, with beautiful color illustrations by Katherine Evans. I think he was in preschool. My mother was not always a patient teacher, and I was often slow to learn, but the scene, the paintings, in memory, carry the purity of an icon.

My favorite book growing up
Rosemary Sutcliffe Eagle IX. It is a story set in Roman Britain. The Eagle is the lost standard of the Ninth Legion. I was a boy obsessed with all things ancient Roman (the alternative to the kind of boy obsessed with dinosaurs). One place I remember reading it was in bed with my father. On Sunday morning, my brother and I were climbing into the big bed. My parents divorced a long time ago. There was a picture on the wall, a modest copy of Velazquez’s Rokeby Venus. To me, this voluptuous woman staring at herself in the mirror was my mother. It’s interesting to me how the place you read in is an integral part of the reading experience.

The book that changed me as a teenager
I wasn’t quite a teenager (I was 12) and it wasn’t quite a book, but it definitely changed me. At the end of the summer term at school, there was an outdoor production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You were Spider-Man, one of Titania’s fairy servants. The play was performed at dusk. All around us are Wiltshire fields and Wiltshire woods. The atmosphere poured out inside me: two worlds touching; The overwhelming richness of the language. This feeling was no doubt influenced in part by the anticipation of the long holiday. And also, of course, by being a boy in puberty. Theater is always exciting.

The writer who changed my mind
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus – his examination of why suicide should not be chosen, given the absurdity of life. I was 18, not suicidal, but I wanted to be smarter and a little French. (These are not ignoble ambitions.) Camus is so cool. These days, it will be sponsored by a company that makes raincoats. His “philosophy” is that the Polish cavalry is preparing for an attack by German tanks. The first is to be stylish. One does not make a fuss. One notices everything. One does not imagine that anything can be saved. Omar Fatty.

The book that made me want to be a writer
This is easy. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence. We were reading it for A level. I found the book overwhelming. I felt like I offered life. Everything I longed for when I was seventeen (someone who was very much in love) was spoken to by this rather grumpy son of a Nottinghamshire miner. The final scenes of the novel forced me to stand on my feet. I was insanely excited. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend life than trying to create something like this myself. It is worth noting the shocking fact that in 1915 The Rainbow was banned and more than 1,000 copies of it were burned. It’s okay to send young men to die like flies in France, but whispering about sex… No, thanks.

The book or author you returned to
As an admirer of D. H. Lawrence, I allowed myself to be influenced by the Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis who (as I understood it) seemed to suggest that if you are for Lawrence, you cannot be for Joyce. Lawrence was morally serious. It wasn’t Joyce. In allegiance to Lawrence, it took me years to get to Joyce, and it was only after I read Dubliners, specifically The Dead, that I could see what should have been obvious – you don’t have to choose. Vastly different personalities, and both are precious.

the The author re-read
I’ve recently been re-reading E.M. Forster. Not sure what triggered that. I reread them all (except A Passage to India). I was very impressed. He conveys a profound rationality in his novels, and an urgent and still relevant call for emotional maturity and openness. The place where angels fear to tread – too early and too light – is everyone’s favourite. All his topics are there. Also, a room with a view. He’s the author of a voice that’s strong, calm – and never shrill – that we need to hear more about.

The book that I could never read again
Countless. All those exciting films that were hanging around the house (which I thoroughly enjoyed as a teenager): Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes, Alastair Maclean, Ian Fleming. I admire them, their professionalism, and their ingenuity. But reading it again would be the agony of going back into a school uniform.

the A writer I discovered later in life
Penelope Fitzgerald. I didn’t know anything about it until my mid-30s. The first book I read by her was the last book she wrote: The Blue Flower. It’s excitingly strange, sometimes very funny, and I think it’s a clear masterpiece – fragments from the life of an 18th-century German poet who died while still very young. It has brought her a long life worthy of understanding and insight. It’s a portrait of different types of madness, but you won’t find a more sane book.

The book I’m currently reading
Dominion by Tom Holland: The history of Christianity and how it has shaped culture to the point where it is almost invisible (we are the goldfish, Holland says, and Christianity is the water in which we swim). I am very grateful to him. I learn more, and I’m rethinking some of my lazy assumptions. In addition, I am re-reading the collected poems of Elizabeth Bishop. There is nothing flashy about her stuff. Just the quiet authority of someone who knew with pen in hand exactly what she was doing. She used to be somewhat in Robert Lowell’s shadow, but not anymore; A poet (like Marianne Moore, whom she knew well). What initially seems ironic and ironic, on rereading, seems more like heartbreak.

Read my palm
Really, what I want are my old Tintin albums. But where are they? Did you give them away? Hergé is a somewhat controversial figure. He did not cover himself in glory during the war. I think Tintin and Captain Haddock might not approve of it. But as kids, my brother and I couldn’t get enough of it.