“I love books that make me cry,” says actor David Morse. “Not cheap tears, though I shed plenty of those, but tears of recognition of something deeper, something beautiful, something pointing at a bigger reality.” Morse has played on and off-Broadway, notably as the groping uncle in “How I Learned to Drive.” He’s now in the Roundabout Theatre’s “The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin,” about a man jailed for fraud who, newly free, tries to con his way back into his family. But he’s no villain, says this long-married father of three: “No one will give Tom a break, so he uses means he doesn’t want to use to get what he so desperately needs.” Here are four of the books he loves to read.
Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
While I was studying acting with William Esper in the late ’70s, living in a little apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with barely any furniture, I read this out loud. Maybe because my circumstances and inner turmoil felt so much like Raskolinkov’s, the main character’s, but when I got to the end I went back to page one and read it out loud a second time.
A Soldier of the Great War
by Mark Helprin
Elegant. Epic. Romantic. It’s the most amazing experience of World War I through one man’s life. I am in awe of this book, one of my favorites — the research and details and feeling for the extraordinary and beautiful in the midst of the horrific and the ordinary, though there is not much ordinary in this book.
Surprised by Joy
by C.S. Lewis
I read this around the same time I read “Crime and Punishment.” I had read Lewis’ Narnia books and loved his writing. “Surprised by Joy” is his account of moving from being an atheist to someone who believes. His sudden experiences of longing, what he called joy, were something I recognized in my own life.
How Green Was My Valley
by Richard Llewellyn
For “How I Learned to Drive,” I had to learn a South Carolina accent, and during its run I read “How Green Was My Valley” out loud in the same accent. It takes place in a coal-mining community in Wales, but no matter, the book lent itself to the Southern accent, and my experience was profound. Plenty of tears!