‘Buy anything they tell you to’: Comedian John Mulaney can’t stop recommending this Eugene bookstore

When celebrity comedian John Mulaney was in Eugene earlier this year, he stopped into J. Michaels Books downtown and walked out with a stack of eight books, including a modern Hollywood-set noir, a biography of a forgotten French-Belarusian painter and the increasingly surreal tale of a whaling ship.

Since Mulaney’s stop at the store, timed around a May performance at the Cuthbert Amphitheater, he has made no secret of the success of his visit.

“Go there in person and buy anything they tell you to,” he wrote in the caption of a June 30 Instagram post, in which he raved about the book “Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants” by Mathias Énard. 

In this case, “they” is Seth Murray, a 32-year-old bookseller at J. Michaels who was reading behind the counter when Mulaney walked into the store, at Broadway and Pearl Alley in downtown Eugene.

Murray, who has lived in Eugene since 2023 after a stint in academia and time spent working at Paris’ famed English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company, said shortly after Mulaney started asking for recommendations, he knew the comedian was a legitimate literature lover.

Murray said he started to get that feeling he does when there’s a true reader in the store: a glimmer in their eye, a specific ask, then, the shared knowledge that all bets are off as he springs into the shelves to pull out titles.

“For me, it’s like coming alive,” he said.

But that level of care and excitement in pulling books for Mulaney wasn’t because he was a famous comedian. (Murray doesn’t watch much stand-up comedy, anyway.)

“He didn’t receive that degree of attention because he was John Mulaney,” he said. “He, celebrity or not, actually was one of the best readers I’ve met in this bookstore, in terms of interest and curiosity and desire. He was an extraordinary customer and clearly had read a lot and was really, really sharp.”

#MULANEYREADS

Mulaney got to reading. He documented his reviews on Instagram with the hashtag #MULANEYREADS. 

First, it was “Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art,” a biography of the French-Belarusian Jewish painter written by Celeste Marcus. Then came the Hollywood noir “Everybody Knows” by Jordan Harper. And then “Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants” by Mathias Énard.

“Everybody Knows” was a bit of a “roll of the dice,” Murray said, as a recommendation to Mulaney. The bookseller had loved Harper’s newest novel, “A Violent Masterpiece,” but it was out of stock, so he recommended Mulaney pick up “Everybody Knows.”

The risk came because the novel is a deep critique of Hollywood, with crisis management public relations and explicitly named celebrities, but Murray thought it would land well — he had recently gotten into Harper’s work, reading one book and then tearing through the rest.  

The comedian had the same experience. His August #MULANEYREADS post was simply everything Harper had ever written, with a shoutout to J. Michaels Books. “I read all of these in about two weeks,” he said in his video. “I really think you should get all of them and burn through them like I did.”

Murray didn’t realize Mulaney had been raving about his picks all summer until an author wrote to thank him and the store. That was Marcus, the author of the biography “Chaim Soutine,” via a postcard also suggesting she do a reading there if she was ever in Eugene from Washington D.C.

She wasn’t the only author to reach out. Murray recommended Mulaney read the book “North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther” by Ethan Rutherford, which he pitched as Herman Melville-meets-David Lynch. Mulaney loved the book, posting a video review on the beach.

“This book is so batshit. Funny, bizarre, violent, reckless, and very moving,” he wrote in the caption. “I haven’t read ‘Moby Dick’ because whatever but Ethan Rutherford’s description of catching a whale or failing to catch a whale is one of the most visceral things I have ever absorbed.”

His description of the book as “batshit” was Rutherford’s favorite review quote so far, the author wrote in an email to J. Michaels Books. The Mulaney shoutout, Rutherford wrote, was attention-getting for the author: “I heard from more people about this than anything else I’ve ever done in my entire life.”

“And it would not have happened if he hadn’t walked into your shop, and someone there hadn’t taken the time to recommend it to him, and put it in his hand — if someone in the shop hadn’t enjoyed the book enough to recommend it in the first place,” Rutherford wrote in the email. “It makes me so happy to think about. And it is deeply meaningful. (more so, even, than whatever strange [Instagram] fame-wave broke over the book).”

‘A really specific magic’

Murray was not looking to make celebrity book club picks with his selections. (Though, he said, he’d be lying if he claimed there wasn’t an ego bump.) 

He said picking a book for himself or other people is “a really specific magic that I don’t totally understand,” following intuition, urges and whims throughout the shelves. 

He never starts with, “What’s your favorite book?” instead asking for recent titles that excited them or any particular phases in their lives (Elizabeth Strout for recent retirees is a must). There are no blanket recommendations, he said, except for the occasional must-read political book.

Seeing the Mulaney picks reverberate beyond the bookstore has been a rare experience for him. It’s an opportunity to see a difference being made for authors he loves, he said, especially when writers like Harper, Rutherford and Marcus garnered massive public exposure the books had not received on publication.

“I love this stuff in an era where it feels like there’s a different article running in The Atlantic every month about the decline of literacy,” Murray said. “To be able to take an author who, for whatever reason, for the whims of the market, the whims of history, whatever, doesn’t get the recognition I think they deserve to see, to be able to make a slight change or to just draw some other people toward this thing that I’m really excited about, it’s the best feeling in the world.”

John Mulaney’s J. Michaels Books reading list

Here’s the full list of books that Murray recommended to Mulaney, why Murray picked it and any review, if Mulaney has posted one to his social media so far.

‘Chaim Soutine: Genius, Obsession, and a Dramatic Life in Art’ by Celeste Marcus

A 2025 biography of the painter Chaim Soutine, a Jewish painter who grew up in Belarus, moved to Paris working alongside artists including Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani, and died in occupied France in 1943 during World War II.

What Murray says: “I had followed her career and ordered him for the store because I think it’s really cool, and I think she’s really, really sharp.” [Marcus, whom Murray called a “publishing wunderkind,” runs the Washington D.C.-based literary journal Liberties.]

What Mulaney says: “a great biography and a great book about creativity in general.”

‘Knockemstiff’ by Donald Ray Pollock

A 2008 book of interconnected short stories set in rural Ohio.

What Murray says: “He asked a bit about where I was from, and I said Ohio. So he asked, ‘Do you have a good Ohio book?’ And I actually did. This collection of very weird short stories called “Knockemstiff” by Donald Ray Pollock. He said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve seen a movie that was adapted from another one of this guy’s novels,’ and I had just watched that movie too. But this is the thing that bookstores sort of facilitate: really odd kinds of synchronicities.”

‘Picture of Nobody’ by Philip Owens

A 1936 satire picturing William Shakespeare in 1930s London. 

What Murray says: “He said, ‘You know, do you have any like small press recommendations?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely.’ I was really excited to share with him. There’s a series that’s new within the last five years, called McNally Editions, that is affiliated with McNally Jackson Bookstore in New York City, and strangely enough, the senior editor for it lives in Eugene.”

‘Everybody Knows’ by Jordan Harper

A 2023 satire noir about a crisis management publicist investigating the murder of her boss. 

What Murray says:  “I said, ‘If you like “Chinatown” and you’re interested in good crime fiction, you’ll love this.’ He said absolutely, and kind of chucked that on as well.”

What Mulaney says: “Here are my recommendations: Every single Jordan Harper book that is in print. This is the one I started with. ‘Everybody Knows.’ I got this at J. Michael’s bookstore in Eugene, Oregon, mentioned them before. I know it goes together very well with his newest book, ‘A Violent Masterpiece,’ both very kick-ass L.A. noir novels, ‘Last King of California,’ ‘She Rides Shotgun,’ really dark, really cool Inland Empire noir novels, and then ‘Love and Other Wounds,’ a collection of very awesome, dark, gritty, fast-moving, totally propulsive stories. I read all of these in about two weeks. I really think you should get all of them and burn through them like I did.”

‘North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther’ by Ethan Rutherford

A 2025 debut novel about an increasingly surreal voyage of a whaling ship.

What Murray says: “I was able to recommend my favorite new book of last year, which was called ‘North Sun’ by Ethan Rutherford. I described it to him as Herman Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’ meets like a David Lynch film, and that really made him laugh.”

What Mulaney says: “‘North Sun or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther’ is my July must must must read. This book is so batshit. Funny, bizarre, violent, reckless, and very moving. I haven’t read ‘Moby Dick’ because whatever but Ethan Rutherford’s description of catching a whale or failing to catch a whale is one of the most visceral things I have ever absorbed.” 

‘Light While There Is Light’ by Keith Waldrop

A 1993 memoir of the poet’s upbringing in midcentury America and his mother’s fervent, speaking-in-tongues strain of religious belief.

What Murray says: “He pulled that off the shelf himself, and I had just finished it two days before, and that’s how I knew we were kind of on the same wavelength.”

‘Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants’ by Mathias Énard

A 2010 historical novella about Michelangelo accepting a commission in Istanbul.

What Murray says: “He was reading this new paperback novel by a French writer named Laurent Binet called ‘Perspectives,’ which is a kind of murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence, involving Michelangelo. This novel from 2015 by another French writer who has sort of a cult following that I love, wrote a really interesting kind of noir novel about Michelangelo too, set in like, you know, 16th century Istanbul, and so I said, ‘Well, if you like that, you’d probably like this.’”

What Mulaney says: “A small, perfect book. Michelangelo, angry at the Pope, takes a bad gig for good money in Constantinople. It reads like a beautiful 16th-century detective story. It’s short and wild.”

‘Northline’ by Willy Vlautin

A 2008 novel from the Portland author, about a woman fleeing Las Vegas to rebuild her life in Nevada.

What Murray says: “He mentioned that he liked the Portland writer Willy Vlautin, who is a really extraordinary guy — he comes into the bookstore sometimes. One of the nicest guys. I coincidentally just finished reading one of his earlier books, so I ran and grabbed one of his books from deep in his back catalog and recommended that, and then from there we just started talking more and more.”