An Auden devotee and active crusader against gratuitous uses of Times New Roman, 24-year-old Jacob Denno also serves as editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Popshot. A bi-annual poetry publication, Popshot has featured the likes of Murray Lachlan Young and Polarbear, as well as original commissions by artists Esra Røise and Sam Green. Its latest issue, 06. Love, is available at selected bookstores across the world.
1. Best book about trips or journeys.
Probably Alain De Botton's The Art of Travel. It's a refreshing take on the travel guide - not so much as a guide as to where to go and what to see but more how to see it. I think we all suffer from the syndrome of not truly appreciating what's in front of us due to our own petty worries and expectations at the time. The Art of Travel is an important reminder as to how to view travel differently.
2. Which book are you mostly likely to pick as your ultimate survival manual?
I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to take this question literally, but I will. Since human survival rests upon food and shelter, I'd probably take The Illustrated Guide to Edible Wild Plants. Hopefully it wouldn't have the same ending as Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild though...
3. Which author would you most like to go on a vacation with, and what would you do doing?
If we're able to bring him back from the dead, I would take Charles Bukowski and sit on a porch with him with six crates of beer, 11,000 cigarettes and good lighting. Then I would ask him to tell me tales of pickle factories and repeatedly read out his poem The Laughing Heart. It might not be a relaxing vacation but I wouldn't have it any other way.
4. The Lord of the Flies was once described as embodying the "diversity and universality of. . .the human condition in the world of today". Which character do you reckon you are most like?
Gosh, I haven't read this book since school so my memory is rather hazy. Whoever is the kindest one, I would want to be him, even if it meant meeting my demise. I definitely wouldn't be Piggy...poor thing.
5. If there was one book you had to burn for firewood, which would it be?
I don't think there is one book that has ever repulsed me so much that I would have to burn it. However, I might tear every other page out of Malcolm Gladwell's books. I don't need 100 different examples of the same thing to get the point. I'm sure 50 would do.
6. Which paragraph or line from a novel would you choose for your final 'message in a bottle'?
Big question. I'm tempted to go for some W.H. Auden or Mary Frye's Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep but that might be a bit morbid - and a bit predictable. I might actually plump for the aforementioned Charles Bukowski's The Laughing Heart. What better message is there to leave to the world than that?