Books
One Nightstand With Lukas Gage
The actor, memoirist, and self-proclaimed liar prefers books with characters as chaotic as he is.
In One Nightstand, celebrity readers and writers join us at The Blond in 11 Howard to discuss some of their favorite books, allowing us to learn about their tastes and lives in the process.
Lukas Gage has always been a natural storyteller — one who’s never let a few facts get in the way of a good story. “Growing up, I’d lie to my diary to just make my life seem more entertaining. I lied about having horses, [living] in a big mansion, and that I was on American Idol,” the actor tells Bustle. But it wasn’t until Gage started writing his debut memoir, I Wrote This for Attention, that he came to understand the impulse behind those fabrications. “Having a narrative that was my own perspective on what [was happening] was very important to me.”
That desire to shape his own story is partly why Julia Fox’s Down the Drain — her unflinching memoir about survival, identity, and self-invention — resonated so deeply with him. “She said something like, ‘Don’t let the *ssholes win,’ but I’ve also been the *sshole,’” says Gage, 30. “We’ve all been the *sshole. We’ve all been the villainous person at times. Julia’s never trying to be the hero of her story, and she never plays the victim.”
Gage found a similar moral complexity in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. He also found himself relating to the novel’s themes of reinvention and redemption. “I’ve lived a good amount of life in all these different places and been thrown into situations that were a little insane at the time,” he says. As such, the novel’s central duo — Theo and Boris — each spoke to him in equal measure. “Both of them lived inside of me at that time.”
Another book that’s lingered with him is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which follows a missionary family in the Congo. “Each [family member] has such a clear voice and perspective. Some of them don’t align with other people’s perspective of what’s happening in this situation,” he says. “It’s so funny to see every person can have such a wildly different version of reality, and she does that so beautifully.”
His final pick, The Library Book by Susan Orlean, is also full of opposing accounts and contradictions, especially when it comes its central character, Harry Peak — a man who may or may not have been responsible for the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library. “At first glance, a book about the history of a library is not going to hold my interest,” he says. But once he learned about Peak, he was hooked. “The way that she writes about this troubled character who has a hard time keeping his alibi straight is just so entertaining and interesting.”
Because for Gage, a story doesn’t haven’t to be entirely true — it just has to be one hell of a ride.
Watch the full interview below.
