Jessa Crispin: The Accidental Tastemaker
What types of books and authors grab you?
Back when I was 15, I had gone through my rural (read: crappy) library reading pretty much every book that had a woman’s name in the title: Jane Eyre, Emma, Tess of the D’Urbervilles… Then I came across AK Press Distro, back when they were a mail order catalog. Through them I found amazing stuff like Bust (back when they were a zine, not a glossy), Neil Gaiman’s short stories, and, best of all, Kathy Acker. Reading Acker felt like the stars were realigning. It was the first time I realized books could be as immediate as, say, the PJ Harvey I was listening to.
Since then I’ve read very widely, from scholarly texts to comic books and everything in between. I’m looking for something indefinable when I pick up a book. Sometimes it’s there, in a completely unexpected form (like Kathy Acker, or William James, or Somerset Maugham) and sometimes it’s just really not.
What’s your Top 8 2009 Book Roundup?
Okay, I’m going to do books that I read in 2009, that weren’t necessarily published in 2009.
The Allure of Chanel by Paul Morand
The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf by Kathryn Davis
The Cost of Living and Other Stories by Mavis Gallant
Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven
Beg Borrow Steal: A Writer’s Life by Michael Greenberg
Naming Infinity by Loren Graham
That’s off the top of my head, I’m sure I’m forgetting some.
What do you hope people take with them from the site?
Just the same things I take from it: to learn something, be entertained, know that the world of books is much larger than you’d ever guess reading The New York Times Book Review or whoever.
Why did you choose to start a new media site about dead-tree lit?
Books were what I knew. I always learned about the world through books. Growing up in a town of 1,200 that didn’t even have a movie theater didn’t leave a lot of options. The only other world I knew thoroughly was the pro-choice world, but that was my job. I already worked over 40 hours a week most of the time, and then volunteered as a counselor, and all this other stuff.
Who was with you at the beginning?
It was Michael Schaub, my then-boyfriend, and I. I did the editing, Michael was a contributor (and listener to my ideas), and the guy helped with design. Well, he did the design after the first couple months of me doing the design was too painful for him to watch anymore.
How many people do you have working with/for you now?
There are usually a bunch (the precise scientific definition of a “bunch” is 34) of freelance writers. Michael Schaub is now the managing editor and I’m the editor-in-chief/publisher/whatever. Between Michael and myself, we get an issue together every month.
