Righteous Muse

David Duchovny's fourth novel, Truly Like Lightning (FSG), follows the family of a religious, polygamous former stuntman up against an ambitious investment exec bent on acquiring his land. The X-Files star and novelist lists his inspirations.

AMERICAN PASTORAL by Philip Roth

"My ambition was to engage with sweeping American novels of the last 50 years. For me, at the top of that list is American Pastoral, which, because it is so toweringly great, would be the last thing I would read while writing."

THE SVENGOOLIE CHANNEL

"On Saturday nights, I'd watch the Svengoolie program; schlock horror from back in the day, like the two titles that figure in the book: Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and the lesbian undead flick The Vampire Lovers (1970)."

"IN-A-G ADDA-DA-VIDA"

by Iron Butterfly

"I was calling the novel's utopian compound'A-Gadda-Da-Vida' because those nonsense syllables contain Edenic hope underneath the song's trancelike, muscular, Spinal Tap-ian darkness."

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