The “My First Literary Crush” piece that Slate posted on Tuesday, in which various notable folks discussed the books that they swooned over in their younger years, has generated some great blog posts. Ed, Jenny and Liam (guesting at Old Hag) all wrote about their literary crushes. Before I get to mine, I noticed some entertaining juxtapositions in the Slate piece. In particular, it was interesting to see that George Eliot was a favorite of both Neal Pollack (who loved Middlemarch) and Christopher Hitchens (a fan of The Mill on the Floss).
My first literary crushes, in high school, were for Kurt Vonnegut, T.C. Boyle and John Irving. In college, I first read Ernest Hemingway and was quite taken. Feel free to share your literary crushes in the comments.
