Interview with Thomas Chatterton Williams

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a writer.

Reading vs. Scrolling

Max Raskin: You spend a lot of time reading and writing. On the reading side, how do you actually read? Hard copy? iPad?

Thomas Chatterton Williams: That's a great question. As a rule, I do everything I can to read on paper. I was doing a lot of book-reviewing earlier in my career, and because I was getting so many e-galleys and having to read on Kindle, I started to almost demand that if you want me to look at a book, I have to have a paper copy.

MR: Why is that?

TCW: A variety of reasons. Because we spend so much time on social media and use screens for a lot of things that are not serious, I needed to make a hard division between reading and scrolling. When I have something on paper, I'm active in a way that I'm not when I'm passive on the screen.

MR: Do you write marginalia?

TCW: My books look crazy. There's a ton of marginalia. I'm commenting constantly. Also, I underline very promiscuously, but I dog-ear very selectively. If a page is dog-eared, it's very important, but there's a lot of underlining on many pages.

MR: And what's the point of underlining?