BY MOLLY TEMPLETON
A Real Page-Turner
NPR’s Maureen Corrigan on the reading life.
I
f you’re the kind of rabid reader who fol-
lows critical opinion, you’ve likely heard
of Maureen Corrigan. A reviewer, author
and professor, Corrigan reviews books for
NPR’s “Fresh Air,” writes a mystery column
for the Washington Post and teaches literature
at Georgetown University; she’s also written
reviews for The New York Times, The Village
Voice and others. Her memoir, Leave Me
Alone, I’m Reading: Finding and Losing
Myself in Books, combines analysis of
Corrigan’s favorite genres and books with
tales from her life, including stories about her
father, her career path and her trip to China to
adopt her daughter. Via email, Corrigan
answered a few questions about the life of a
nationally known critic.
What was the first book you reviewed
for “Fresh Air”?
The first piece I did for “Fresh Air” wasn’t
a book review. I had done an exposé about
my experiences as a grader for the AP
English Exam given by the Educational
Testing Service. That exposé ran in The
Village Voice, and one of the producers at
“Fresh Air” had read it and invited me to boil
down the piece and rewrite it for radio. … It
took me weeks to rewrite the piece and make
it more comprehensible to an audience who
was just going to absorb it “by ear.” After I
finally recorded the piece, I was told I had a
good voice for radio and I was invited to sug-
gest some books for possible review on air (I
had been reviewing books for a few years for
The Village Voice Literary Supplement). … I
was very lucky in that “Fresh Air”’s book
critic at the time, John Leonard, was very
generous and willing to let me have air time
as a fellow book reviewer. And the “Fresh
Air” folks were very patient with me as I
learned how to write and speak on radio by
trial and error — which is probably the most
effective way to learn.
How do you decide which book or books
to talk about each time you’re on?
I get catalogues from all the publishing
houses at the start of every season. I also get
Publishers Weekly, the organ of the pub-
lishing world, every week. From those two
sources (and recommendations, and gener-
al buzz in the literary world) I put together
a list about three months in advance of
upcoming books that look promising. …
We try to cover the waterfront on “Fresh
Air” so I like to alternate “big books” with
books put out by smaller publishing houses;
fiction with non-fiction; high literature with
genre fiction; etc. If Terry Gross is inter-
viewing an author, I usually won’t do a
review of that author’s book since … we
like to spread out our coverage as much as
possible. Finally, I receive between 50 and
75 books a week sent to me by publishers
hoping for a review on “Fresh Air.”
Know
Think
Dance
Connect
Listen
Be
More
How do you manage your time,
between “Fresh Air” and teaching and
everything else? How does your read-
ing for the radio inform your teaching,
and vice versa?
I get up very early (around 4 am) on
weekdays to have a solid block of three
hours to read, write, think, prepare for
classes. I frequently incorporate great new
books that I’ve read into the courses I teach
at Georgetown. This year, for instance, I’m
asking students in my freshman lit course
(which deals with political issues in 20th
century America) to read Philip Roth’s
superb novel The Plot Against America.
Students in my autobiography class are
being directed to The Tender Bar by J.R.
Moehringer. And I think teaching and regu-
larly rereading the classics enriches my crit-
ical responses to new books.
Was the structure of Leave Me Alone,
I’m Reading — three central essays
surrounded by smaller pieces —
something you planned from the
beginning, or did those main themes
appear as you wrote?
The structure of Leave Me Alone, I’m
Reading evolved as I was writing it. I
wanted to think about how a lifetime of
serious reading had changed my life for
the better and, occasionally, for the worse
(see the chapter on graduate school in
English!). … I found that the book really
took off for me when I began to think
backwards: starting with my most recent
adventures in reading (women’s extreme
adventure tales) and reaching back
through my discovery of American hard-
boiled detective fiction (Hammett,
Chandler and all those tough guys) in my
20s, and, finally, my earliest love affairs
with reading as a Catholic school girl in
New York City who read a lot of martyr
tales along with Nancy Drew novels. ew
Maureen Corrigan speaks at the downtown Eugene
Library at 7 pm Thursday, Sept. 21.
SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
37