BEST AUTHOR BEST : STEPHEN FRY [2]

.-  WHAT'S the last great book you read?

Goodness. You do put a chap on the stand, don't you! Hm. I reread '' Howards End,'' recently for perhaps for tenth time.

It's incredible to me how Forster can change register, from lightly comic to almost theologically declarative, from delicate to grand.

The last great more recent novel? Donna Tartt's '' The Secret History? '' A.S. Byatt's '' Possession ''  Cormac McCarthy's '' The Road,'' perhaps? Yes, I'll choose that.

But I'm the kind of rapscallion who often prefers the very good to the GREAT.

.-  '' I see myself appearing a thousand times in the Greek myths,'' you write in the new book. Where in the '' Odyssey '' can we find you?

Lazing on the Lotus Eaters probably, not heroically outsmarting Polyphemus the Cyclops. 

When younger, I identified most with Telemachus. My father, although he '' worked from home '' as we would say now, as a scientist / inventor, was absent in the emotional way.

At least I felt so. Happily, like the classical pair, we reunited fondly in the end.

.-  What books are on your night stand?

One must always have a P.G. Wodehouse and an Agatha Christie in the pile - currently '' Uncle Fred in the Springtime '' and '' Mrs. McGinty's Dead.''

'' Wimbledon is coming, so I've also got a copy of '' String Theory '' handy : It's a collection of David Foster Wallace's writing on Tennis. But on top is Stefan Zweig's '' Erasmus of Rotterdam.''

Reading it now is like listening to two prophets who have foreseen the disruptions and upheavals of our age. Chilling and Thrilling.

.-  Do you think any canonical books are widely misunderstood?

What an interesting question. Evelyn Waugh thought '' Brideshead Revisited'' misunderstood. People mostly think '' Brideshead '' is a nostalgic, almost sentimental, farewell to the great country houses and grandeur, grace and careless wit of prewar Britain.

Waugh, a devout Catholic convert, insisted it was about '' the Operation of Grace.'' My feeling is that he is the one who misunderstood it.

.-  You've portrayed Oscar Wilde on film. If there's a latter-day Wilde, who is it?

If only,  if only .......... there are dandies who manage to avoid arch peacockery, but few ; there are verbal dandies who don't want to make you run away dry heaving, but fewer ; to combine Wilde's insight, acuity, kindness, breadth of reading, wisdom, human folly and divine talent is asking too much of anyone in our culture.

.-  You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, so you invite?

Dickens for party tricks, jokes and manic gamesome energy. Wilde for ........ well, I need hardly say.

Samuel Johnson for gruntingly profound good sense.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.