79.30

“The Books That Made Writers.” Symposium contribution. New York Times, 25 November, 7, 80–82. Twenty-two writers, including Mailer, Gabriel García Márquez, Joyce Carol Oates, Dr. Suess, Tom Wolfe, Malcolm Cowley and P.D. James, answer the question: “What book made you decide to become a writer and why?” Mailer names Studs Lonigan by James T. Farrell, Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood, Jeffrey Farnol’s The Amateur Gentleman and the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Hardy. See 71.32.