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Rick Moody is the author of the novels Purple America (1997) and The Ice Storm (1994) and the story collection The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven (1995). His fiction and essays have been published in the New Yorker, Esquire, the Paris Review, Harper's, Grand Street, Details, and the New York Times. He lives in Brooklyn.
The Black Veil
In his early 20s, a lifetime of excess left Rick Moody suddenly stranded in a depression so profound that he feared for his life. A stay in a psychiatric hospital was just the first step out of mental illness. In this astonishingly inventive book, Moody tells the story of his collapse and recovery in an inspired journey through what it means to be young and confused, older and confused, guilty, lost, and healed. Woven through his own story, Moody also traces his family's paternal line, looking for clues to his own melancholy-in particular to one ancestor, Reverend Joseph Moody, about whom Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote an archetypal story of shame called "The Minister's Black Veil".
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Rick Moody's Summer Reading List
The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
Big, long early twentieth century classic about a sanatorium and sufferers with consumption. I have tried two or three times and this time I mean to finish it.
Collected Stories of Richard Yates
by Richard Yates
This generous volume of melancholy short fiction from one of the great underrated voices of the fifties and sixties has been on my shelf for some months. It's time to get to it.
Collected Stories of Isaac Babel
by Isaac Babel
My favorite Russian writer in some ways (although I also love Dostoevsky). Babel was killed by Stalin, if I'm remembering correctly, but before that he wrote stories of awesome lyricism and compaction, some about being in the cavalry, some about growing up in Odessa. They're all marvelous.
Lemony Snicket, the Unauthorized Biography
by Daniel Handler
I'm a little late out of the gate on this Lemony Snicket business. Lemony Snicket is the author of a series of deranged children's books full of a wicked sense of humor that I admire. I got Lemony Snicket's autobiography when I was out on tour for my most recent book, and carried it around with me for a while. It is designed in a wild, manic way and is hysterically funny. I wish I could have this much fun when I write.
Crime Stories
by Dashiell Hammett
This is the Library of America edition of Hammett's short fiction. I've just got a glimpse of it, but I'm really interested. I hate crime fiction generally, because I just don't care who did it, and usually the prose is hideous, but Hammett's blunt, simple sentences are lovely, and he more or less pioneered the genre, so I am going to learn more.
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