It’s not unusual for Jeremy Shamos to play a psychiatrist by day (for TV’s “Elementary”) and a neurotic husband that very night (in the Round about’s off-Broadway “Dinner with Friends,” through April 13.) When you’re an actor, you go where the work takes you, no matter how schizoid your life may seem. “I try to sympathize with all my characters,” says Shamos, who received a Tony nomination for dual roles in “Clybourne Park” a few seasons back and went up against Al Pacino in the last “Glengarry Glen Ross” revival. What about all those serial killers and pedophiles he’s played on TV? They key to those roles, Shamos says, is “looking for what makes them tick.” Here are four books the Brooklyn resident says really got under his skin.
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
I read it when it came out in paperback about 16 years ago. It’s massive — there’s almost a regular book’s worth of endnotes at the back, and I put a piece of cardboard there to mark it. I learned a lot of words from this non-linear, insane book I couldn’t stop reading. I carried it everywhere I went, and only put it down when I met my [future] wife.
Joseph and His Brothers
by Thomas Mann
When my son was born, my dad gave him a really nice copy of this with a beautiful inscription: “One day you’ll read this, and your father will have read it.” It’s about lineage: the story of Joseph, who went from slavery to becoming one of the most powerful people in Egypt. It’s a book I hope my son will pass on to his son.
A Visit From the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
This book does what I love in the theater: It plays with our perceptions of time and memory and jumps around perspectives in a “Rashomon” way. You read about someone and, in the next chapter, they’re much younger. It’s beautifully orchestrated in a seemingly random way.
Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
This is the story of a couple and the disintegration of what they think is the American Dream. I find Yates’ ability to describe the feelings and moments between people uncanny. I intentionally didn’t see the [2008] movie, though I love Sam Mendes, Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, because I created such strong images the film could never match.