Rob’s Reader of the Week: Teri Tynes

Rob’s Intro: Anyone who knows me well, knows that I have an insatiable passion for New York. It’s got nothing to do with shopping or visiting the regular tourist haunts, but it’s got everything to do with New York’s urban sprawl, its eclectic art and architecture and most of all – its incredible cultural diversity.

Teri is probably the one single person who’s fueled my passion for New York more than anyone else and for this I consider her a true inspiration. However her literary passion, and her love of books provides further inspiration not just for me but for any reader. It’s with great pride and much gratitude that I present to the readers of RobAroundBooks, the one and only Teri Tynes:

I grew up in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of wildcatter, an independent oilman, and a cultured, literary Southern belle. I’m a fifth-generation Texan on my mother’s side, and a seventh-generation South Carolinian on my father’s. My father died when I was eight, and in the many years after, my mother took me traveling whenever possible. She took me to new places, I believe, as a way to shield both of us from the sadness, but I think she was also trying to cultivate my imagination in every way possible and to help me make my way independently in the world. My mother loved to visit two cities in particular, Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York, and I believe deep down, and even superficially, that this duality of the Wild West and the cultivated east has formed my basic identity. It’s the same conflict you’ll find in any western film. I think of myself as Mary Shelley in cowboy boots or Calamity Jane waking up in Edith Wharton’s house.

During my high school years in Texas, I started getting up early on most mornings to read before school. I can still recall those pre-dawn hours where I devoured the classics – Dickens, Dostoevsky, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, George Sand, and Thomas Mann, among many others, and I also read a great deal of political theory and many plays. These were the years 1968-1972, so for sure I sneaked in some political treatises for the youth revolution. When I went away to Oberlin College in Ohio, I studied theater and political science. Afterward, I attended graduate school at The University of Texas at Austin where I studied political science and later American Studies. I remained in Austin for many years, working in a bookstore for five years and teaching political science at a community college. The bookstore, Garner & Smith, was a legendary bookstore in Austin, and it’s where I learned most everything about books and about the people who loved them.

Before my spouse and I moved to New York in the summer of 2006 we had been living for nine years in Columbia, South Carolina, a smart and fun southern state capital and college town where I had served in several leadership positions in publishing and the arts. I was editor-in-chief and art critic of the city’s weekly newspaper, the director of the state’s largest contemporary gallery, and a lecturer in art history at the University of South Carolina. I also worked as an in-house editor for the literary publishing house, Bruccoli, Clark, and Layman, editing volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography. I published several art reviews in ArtPapers magazine and essays for artist catalogues. My career makes perfect sense to me but not to others.

When New York University offered my spouse a teaching position, we moved to New York in the summer of 2006. I didn’t really know what to do with myself except walk around the streets and enjoy everything. That turned out to be productive. After living in New York for a year I created the website, Walking Off the Big Apple, a strolling guide to New York arts and culture, as a way to help me understand my place in the city. I now work as a consultant with the Tribeca Film Institute, and I’m the Managing Editor of The Moving Image, a journal for moving image archivists. Walking Off the Big Apple is my big love, as it has opened up worlds I could never imagine. It feels like what my mother always wanted for me, although I’m not sure she would understand the blog new media thing.

1. Favourite Genre? Literary fiction and non-fiction essays. I tend to pick up older classic works I haven’t read, new critically-acclaimed novels, or essays about contemporary topics. I make it a point to steep myself in New York literary history, so I’ve recently read Truman Capote, Richard Price, Paul Auster and Don DeLillo. I like to mix it up, though. The book beside the bed right now is Arthur & George by Julian Barnes.

2. Favourite Book? I have to think about the time and the place I read a particular book to properly figure out my favorite. So much of choosing is about how the book affected my life at a critical juncture. If that’s the case, then several children’s books should be on the list, including A Child’s Garden of Verses, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Hobbit.

Books that come to mind by quick free association-

Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
Middlemarch, George Eliot
Ulysses, James Joyce
Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin
The Stranger, Albert Camus
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
On Revolution, Hannah Arendt
The Tradition of the New, Harold Rosenberg
Reflections, Walter Benjamin
Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
Robert Caro, The Power Broker

My favorite? The most gripping book I have ever read is Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

3. Why do you love reading so much? Reading is a natural extension of my curiosity about the world. I read anything – backs of cereal boxes, posted signs for bands playing at clubs, advertisements, instruction manuals, warning labels, etc.

4. Favourite reading place? I’ll read anywhere. As a New Yorker, I’ve learned to read standing in line and on long subway trips. My favorite place is at home sitting on the couch and next to a good light with my a dog or two curled up next to me.

5. How BIG is your reading addiction? The apartment is full of books, although when we moved to New York, I sold hundreds of books and donated many more to book sales for charity. When we made the move, I did manage to ship my favorite 2,000 books to the new address. Now that I’m surrounded by great bookstores within walking distance of my apartment, I’ve started to accumulate more. There have been many times in my life when I regretted parting with a book in retrospect, because the way my life works I end up needing it again.

6. How do you normally add books to your collection? I will order some books online, but I believe it’s important to shop at independent book dealers. Furthermore, browsing bookstores lead to other books and provides the atmosphere for sharing in a vibrant literary culture. I also check out books from the New York Public Library.

7. How do you decide what to read? I’ve started to decide what to read based on the season – substantial long books for the fall and winter and short stories and collections for the spring and winter. But, I do read the standard book review publications and make selections based on various recommendations.

8. Ebooks – love or hate? No, I prefer to hold the book as an object. I appreciate a few university websites with annotated editions of particular works.

9. Has reading inspired you to do any serious writing yourself? My reading has directly inspired the kind of personal literary criticism that you see on my website. I’m hoping that the work will continue to evolve in a serious way, but I’m not self-conscious about it.

10. What single piece of advice (or tip) would you give to fellow readers? Don’t just pick up the book casually. Pick it up in a deliberate way. Look at it. Think about it. Feel it. Notice the type of paper and the typeset. Open the cover and read what’s on the page you see before you. And turn the page and read what’s there. And then the next, and the next. Love your bookmark.

Teri – I really want to thank you for taking the time and effort to give this interview.