Benjamin Markovits

3:AM Magazine » A General Love Of Books: An Interview With Benjamin Markovits

*3:AM:* All four of your novels have had an academic aspect, whether it is writing about teachers, from the point of view of academics, or bringing to life set-text Byron and his nearest and dearest. Could you imagine yourself creating something without academia so woven into it, and why do you think academic subjects are so creatively suggestive for you?

*BM:* Good question, by which I mean, I find the answer embarrassing. The truth is, I’m the child of academics and grew up, like many people, knowing nothing better than the world of school. It’s helpful to know a world well if you want to write about it, so I write about teachers, professors and students. I’d distinguish between the /The Syme Papers/which is properly a campus novel, and the other books, though. Even high school seems to me to belong to a different kind of thing than university: everybody goes to high school, after all. And the Byron novels don’t strike me as very academic. They have more to do with a general love of books, and the kind of people who view their lives through books.