Which books might we be surprised to find on your bookshelves?

Maybe those in my country and western section — the Larry McMurtry novels, an amazing picture book of the Grand Ole Opry, and a history of frontier prostitution lamentably titled “Soiled Doves.” Also, I have always collected books on cars and racing. I have a book that’s just a glossary of terms from the world of gas dragsters, and another on the Czech-built Tatra, the most beautiful make of car the world has ever seen. And I am a completist about the photo books of the “porn auteur” Elmer Batters. If only I collected books on marijuana I could have a shelf called “Ass, Gas or Grass: Nobody Reads for Free.”

What kind of reader were you as a child?

Supposedly I went into my room with “Alice in Wonderland,” which was given to me when I was 5, and didn’t come out until I was done. I was an early reader but I don’t think that says much. Having a child and being around them, it’s apparent to me that there’s some kind of clock that goes off at different times for different kids. Mine went off early, and I didn’t like to sleep. So my mother let me stay up as late as I wanted looking at books, and she says I stayed up all night doing that starting at age 3. My best years are way behind me.

What were your favorite childhood books? Do you have a favorite literary character?

I got all my politics and culture and my sense of the great wide world of adults from Mad Magazine. But all other comic books literally gave me a headache. I loved “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” “Julie of the Wolves” and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I still think of that moment at the end of “Island of the Blue Dolphins” when Karana is rescued and the seaman gives her a coarse dress made of denim coveralls to make her “decent.” Later, fourth or fifth grade, I remember being obsessed with “My Ántonia,” by Willa Cather; devastated by the brave demise of McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”; and crushed out on Pappadopoulis, the bohemian Odysseus of “Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me,” by Richard Fariña.

What children’s books have you enjoyed discovering (or rediscovering) through your 6-year-old son?

We read a lot of books that were mine when I was little, saved all these years: “Higglety Pigglety Pop!,” by Maurice Sendak. “The Wedding Procession of the Rag Doll and Broom Handle,” by Carl Sandburg, illustrated by Harriet Pincus. “The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine,” by Donald Barthelme. Tolstoy’s “Fables and Folktales for Children” — so simple, and wonderful, if slightly dark. They remind me that a children’s story doesn’t need to pander in order to entertain. (The problem with so much recent children’s literature: It panders, and yet is often inappropriate for children). Two new discoveries that are profound works of children’s literature: “Paddle-to-the-Sea,” by Holling C. Holling, and “The Animal Family,” by Randall Jarrell.

Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer?

I studied the novels of Joan Didion and Don DeLillo, who seemed deft and worldly in a way I hoped to someday be. More recently, I have grown deeply impressed by the verve and erudition of “The Recognitions,” by William Gaddis. It is a work that, to me, fulfills the ambition to apprehend the writer’s own moment as history — that is the goal, to my mind. I don’t care to read about present-day America unless the writer truly has something to say about these times — uses the contemporary, rather than gets used by it. The whole idea of “offering up a mirror” is not enough. I want more.

Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” is without question the book that made me want to try to be a fiction writer as an actual serious undertaking.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

Given who our president is, this is like a trick question. I have serious problems with Obama. But Obama is not poorly read; that is not his problem. He’s extremely well read. He’s still got a drone program. He lets bankers run our economy. Allows Guantánamo to remain open. It would be foolish to pretend I could recommend some enlightening text and he’d scratch his chin and then go for a policy makeover.