Who Would You Want to Hear Reading the Classics?

Hearing Richard Russo read a one-minute excerpt from Huckleberry Finn for “Moving Paragraphs,” a new video series from Barnes & Noble Studio got me to thinking: If I were producing a series of short animated films with A-list authors reading bits from great literature, who would I go to next?

So far, sticking to American writers and American fiction, I’ve come up with Chuck Palahniuk on “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Joyce Carol Oates taking a scene from The Scarlet Letter, and James Ellroy dipping into Red Harvest. Also, I’d be curious to see what David Mamet made of fellow Chicagoan James T. Farrell, but I didn’t quite get to the level of picking out a particular passage.

Anyway, I’d love to find out the pairings you would come up with—for one thing, I know there’s a lot of great opportunities involving poetry that I’m not catching because my mind’s not sharp enough at this hour. Feel free to fill up the comments section with your suggestions!

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