TPQ: What are you currently reading?
AJL: Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley Under Water – the last in that series. Highsmith is a bit, as they say ‘dark,’ but what other novelist do you know who have Lou Reed’s “Transformer” figure prominently into their story? Ian Buruma’s Year Zero: A History of 1945, Michael James Robert’s Tell Tchaikovsky the News: Rock. ‘n’ Roll, the Labor Question and the Musicians’ Union, 1942-1968, Evanzz Karl’s The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad, and Matthew D. Lieberman’s Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. There’s a methodological connection to this list – there really is — but I’ll spare you.
TPQ: Best and worst books you have ever read?
AJL: I think Catch 22 is brilliant as is Slaughter House Five and Marx’s Capital Volume 1. As for worst, Frank Dikköter’s, Mao’s Great Famine, was pretty bad. He set out to prove Mao Zedong was the worst person ever, throwing out a confusion of facts to make it seem he was on solid ground. He was not. Also, I recently soldiered through Tom O’Neil’s Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties. I sympathize with his falling down the Manson rabbit hole, but if you set out to prove a grand conspiracy and end up not being able to, it is probably better to write a different book.
TPQ: Book most cherished as a child?
AJL: That was not how I approached books back then – I wanted to read everything!
TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?
AJL: Again, I was not thinking in terms of authors and favorites, I just remember the process of going from picture books, to pictures with text, to that great leap of books with no pictures – just text! It was like learning how to swim.
TPQ: First book to really own you?
TPQ: Favourite Childhood author?
AJL: Again, I was not thinking in terms of authors and favorites, I just remember the process of going from picture books, to pictures with text, to that great leap of books with no pictures – just text! It was like learning how to swim.
TPQ: First book to really own you?
AJL: Lenin’s State & Revolution with its argument for the “withering away of the state” – which of course at this moment in history is an idea that is too good to be true. That said, to quote John Lennon, “imagine there’s no countries.”
TPQ: Favourite male and female author?
AJL: I was blown away by Handmaids Tale when it came out in the 1980s, so Margaret Atwood would be on the list, along with Shirley Jackson, whose work is haunting and beautifully told. I also really appreciate the work of historian Margaret MacMillian as well as the popular non-fiction of Annie Jacobsen – particularly her book Operation Paper Clip. As for the other gender, E.L. Doctrow, Richard Ford, Norman Mailer, particularly his ‘Sixties’ books. Also historians Richard J. Evans and Geoffrey Roberts and their writings on the Third Reich, Stalin, Molotov and Zhukov. They set the bar for history that is rigorous, illuminating and engaging.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?
AJL: Non-fiction, because the actuality of things is usually more fantastic than fantasy. That said I make it a point to always be reading some type of fiction — otherwise I worry I am wasting this ‘gift’ of consciousness.
TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?
TPQ: Biography, autobiography or memoir that most impressed you?
AJL: James Ryan’s biography Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism, led me on a path to trying to understand the US Communist Party on its own terms. Before that Richard Wright’s Black Boy, which was so extremely searing, made a huge impression. Also Ralph Carter Elwood’s Malinovsky, A Life Without a Cause – it is a slim biography of a highly important Tsarist informant, who too few people bothered to draw correct conclusions about.
TPQ: Any author or book you point blank refuse to read?
AJL: “Memoirs” written by anyone under thirty. Biographies of politicians published to accompany their run for office. Any novel in which the author is more concerned with showing they can write, rather than writing. Also, honorable mention to Infinite Jest. I believe David Foster Wallace was speaking to me directly with his title – telling me it was a scam. I could be wrong, but I am keen to avoid being made a fool ... again.
TPQ: A book to share with somebody so that they would more fully understand you?
AJL: I would have to say Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists. I wrote it to make sense of my experience of having been a long-time radical who became profoundly disenchanted with an organization I worked with for a long time. Some mistakes in life cannot be fixed, but they can be better understood.
TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?
AJL: It was actually my book, The Folk Singers and the Bureau. I think it was pretty darn generous of me not to make a family member pay for my book!
TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?
AJL: Having watched Inside Llewyn Davis – loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk — and more recently Judas and the Black Messiah about the murder of Fred Hampton, and The Trial of the Chicago Seven, about the trial the radicals who organized protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, I am starting to wonder if it would be better to stop making films “based on true events.” It seems to me they create more confusion than clarity – mashing together documentary with drama, and diminishing both in the process.
TPQ: The just must - select one book you simply have to read before you close the last page on life.
AJL: I don’t want to lay down any benchmarks that once crossed, will render continuing moot.
⏩ Aaron J. Leonard is a writer and historian with a particular focus on the history of radicalism and state suppression. He is the author of Heavy Radicals: The FBI’s Secret War on America’s Maoists and A Threat of the First Magnitude—FBI Counterintelligence & Infiltration: From the Communist Party to the Revolutionary Union. His current book, The Folk Singers & the Bureau, was published in September 2020
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