Riffs: Bill Loehfelm, author, Bloodrot – on his favorite novels

“My favorite book is The Great Gatsby. I go back to that for the overt artistry of the writing and for the character of Jay Gatsby. I love him as an idea, the idea of totally selling out for a lost cause because it’s what you love most in the world. I love that doomed romantic heroism. I go back to Huckleberry Finn a lot, mostly to marvel at the voice and the covert artistry of it – there’s so much beauty in that book, and Twain is so subtle with it, the way he delivers it through Huck’s voice. Two more contemporary novels are Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. They are standard-bearers for what the so-called genre of crime writing can be used to explore.”