Pecking Order

Among the perks for $250-plus donors to the Library Associates, which supports the Los Angeles Public Library, are exclusive invitations to the Gregory Peck Reading Series. Six times a year, Peck asks actor friends--it doesn’t hurt when your friends include Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and Kathy Bates--to perform live readings for the series, now in its fourth season at the Central Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium. We spoke to the actor about reading, writing and Oprah.

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Q: The reading series is diverse: courtroom speeches of Clarence Darrow, “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,” “Catcher in the Rye.”

A: The actors choose their own material.

Q: Ever been surprised by a selection?

A: Delighted. There was a brilliant reading of Dylan Thomas’ “Christmas in Wales” by the fellow who was in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

Q. Tim Curry?

A: Yes, brilliant, brilliant. Helen Mirren doing a scene from “Cleopatra.” We have had so many wonderful nights.

Q: Any problem persuading the actors?

A: When I call people, mostly they say yes. Once in a while, I have to go through a buffer person, or PR person, and I don’t hear back.

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Q: Gregory Peck deals with buffer people?

A: They can be tough.

Q: Why did you choose the Central Library?

A: This is an oasis of civility. Surrounded by high-rises, this magnificent building with 5,000 people a day coming through, that wonderful patio. It’s a kind of European plaza plunked down in the middle of L.A.

Q: What was the first book you ever checked out?

A: I got my first library card at age 6 in La Jolla. It was a series of books about cavemen and cave children. They talked English with the occasional “aagh” and “ugh,” and I was fascinated.

Q: Ever consider being an author?

A: I scribble a few pages once in a while of a memoir which may or may not ever be finished.

Q: Do you think reading has too much competition?

A: Very definitely. We’re trying to encourage people to go back to reading books. I’m at the time of my life when I do things I love doing. I’m going back to poetry a good deal, and the visual arts, and, for that matter, nature.

Q: So I take it you’re not a member of Oprah’s Book Club?

A: No, I don’t find it very entertaining. I’ve been reading the memoirs of Marcel Pagnol.

Q: When do you read?

A: I read in the evenings if I’m free. I don’t want to get into all the details of my intimate life here, but I don’t need as much sleep as my younger wife.

Q: So what else is on your night stand?

A: The new Tom Wolfe book, “Man in Full.” I haven’t made too much progress, but he’s vivid. I don’t know whether it verges on caricature, or if what critics say is true and he likes to build people up to break them down, or if he’s unhappy with the current state of culture. Maybe he is. Maybe we need more people who are. --Mary Melton

For Library Associates membership information, call (213) 228-7500.