The Blacklist: What is Red Reading?

Right to Left: James Spader, Megan Boone and an unidentified guest star on a bench in Bryant Park.

Passing through Bryant Park on the way to work recently, I came upon a shoot for the upcoming season of The Blacklist and decided to find out what Reddington himself was currently reading.
​
Scene shot, James Spader made his way to his trailer and I fell in step alongside him for a walk and talk. Here’s what I found out:

Spader is currently re-reading famed and prolific writer for The New Yorker Joseph Mitchell’s My Ears are Bent. Mitchell excelled at interviewing those on the fringes of society and this 1938 collection of articles visit the lives of everyone from pickpockets and Voodoo conjurors to George Bernard Shaw and George M. Cohan. The interviews and stories found within these pages take place in the depression era New York City that has all but vanished. The Fulton Fish Market, old tenement neighborhoods and the like have been radically altered over the decades, though those who dwell here still try to survive the furious pace of this great city. The strange, the creative and those looking for alternative paths in life have long sought out New York City, and Mitchell sought them in turn to paint a picture of life itself. One can imagine Raymond Reddington knowing more than a few of these people, finding the pearls in the muck and filing their knowledge and odd skill-sets away to call on them when a particular venture warrants it.

On the recently finished pile by Spader’s bed lays Helen Macdonald’s Samuel Johnson Prize winning H is for Hawk. Reeling from the sudden death of her father, Macdonald spent a year training a baby goshawk. Persistent and agile predators, goshawks are known for bringing down prey that far outweigh them, making the birds ideal hunting companions. Ideal, that is, if one can train them: the raptors are notorious for being difficult in this regard, and as Macdonald herself attests, they are “bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier” than other birds of prey humans use for hunting. The undertaking is difficult and can be dangerous, but proves to be the tonic Macdonald needs to rebuild herself after such a devastating blow. Blending elements of nature writing, memoir, and the spattering of a biography of T.H. White, H is for Hawk is a hybrid, a book greater than the sum of its own parts, as impressive as the goshawk showing off its skills.

Additionally, Spader has been reading through The New Yorker Magazine’s The 40s: The Story of A Decade, “Particularly about Hiroshima” he said. This anthology of articles from The New Yorker sheds light on a tumultuous and important period both for the magazine and for the world itself. A world at war and the uneasy peace that followed is seen here, along with reviews of such pillars of cinema as Casablanca and Citizen Kane. A most interesting time makes for most interesting reading, and the contributors to The New Yorker during that period were some of the best: Joseph Mitchell is found here too, along with George Orwell, A. J. Liebling, Lillian Ross and even fiction from the likes of Vladimir Nabokov and Shirley Jackson whose short story “The Lottery” stirred up controversy aplenty for the magazine.

It is left for us to speculate whether his focus on the The New Yorker and Mitchell’s work is research for some upcoming project, or if Spader is simply interested in the period. Either is plausible given how well read Spader is: as he put it, “There’s a rotating stack of about six books next to my bed at any given moment.” It would be easy to see him in such a period piece: his dapper dressing style, not dissimilar to Reddington’s actually, would fit very well. On the other hand, it may be that he simply has a thirst for the material and as The Economist said in their review of The 40s, “Think of it as one of Alice’s Wonderland potions, to be sipped from occasionally when one is in need of a dose of the extraordinary.”

As we reached his trailer he turned halfway up the stairs. “Another book someone had given me as a present was The Map Thief, in which of course the New York Public Library figures quite prominently.” Indeed, Michael Blanding’s book about E. Forbes Smiley III, who stole 97 maps from six major collections in the US and London worth a total just above three million dollars, does feature the New York Public Library both as a victim and a beneficiary. Like many of the institutions Smiley pilfered, he also donated to the NYPL as well: The Lawrence H. Slaughter collection can now be accessed online.

Now we know what the man behind Raymond Reddington is reading, but what books would you expect to find on Red’s own book list?
​Leave your suggestions below!