Author Patrick deWitt reveals the author that changed his life
Jesse Kinos-Goodin | CBC Radio | Posted: October 3, 2018 8:40 PM | Last Updated: October 3, 2018
The Sisters Brothers author on how cult writer Charles Portis informed his career
Patrick deWitt is the author behind such books as The Sisters Brothers, a comic Western that has been adapted for a film by John C. Reilly and is out this week, and French Exit, which was released this summer and has been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
We asked him to tell us about the one book that changed his life, and if he remembers how reading shaped him, both personally and professionally.
"There was a realization around the ages of 14 or 15 that I was enjoying reading more than the average 14- or 15-year-old," he says. "It was just this recognition that there was a life's work there. I could spend the rest of my life seeking out authors and I would never finish the books. It was such a comfort to me as a young person. I felt like I had something to do."
This was, deWitt says, before he decided to become an author, which gave him the opportunity to revisit the genres he consumed as a child. Appropriately enough, the one author that deWitt found himself attracted to most was Charles Portis, best known for his comic writing and his classic Western True Grit, which was adapted into a film by the Coen Brothers in 2010.
"I always comes back to Charles Portis, who wrote True Grit, but his other books are not Westerns and are also some of my favourite works of fiction still," he says. "I read him as a young person and it was through Charles Portis that I realized that humour can be elevated to the level of art. That's really informed my work."
Patrick deWitt will be on q Oct. 4 talking about the adaptation of The Sisters Brothers and his latest, French Exit.