Their five most important books
Newsweek has a great little sampler of the books some noted writers say are most important to them. Here’s Walter Mosley’s list, which seems closest to my own reading — you’ll note that in addition to Camus, Garcia Marquez, and Freud (all represented by books I read, and some of which wound up on Doug’s Reading List), it includes Fantastic Four issues 1-100 (also a prominent suggestion to Doug — and to you). Mr. Mosley is a man of taste.
I have a great deal of respect for Dana Gioia’s work at the National Endowment for the Arts in bringing art to people who’ve never gotten much of it before, and his speech at a national conference several years ago similarly impressed me. One of the things he talked about was the death of his child, and how when something like that happens to you it burns through your life like a prairie fire, bringing instant clarity. It was thereafter that he set about quitting his (very successful, very lucrative) corporate marketing executiveship and dedicated himself to being a full-time writer. Here is his list of the five most important books to him; given his personal story, I think I’ll be reading the Merton book.
April 4th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I applaud anybody who prints lists of someone’s favorite books. I also love the bookmarks some libraries give out that say “If you like such-and-such, try so-and-so”.
Think of some of your favorite books and then imagine if you hadn’t found them.
April 5th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
After reading the Walter Mosley article linked to above, I thought about his idea that the books which influence us most are those we read very young. I agree, because in our youth we are so open to ideas and writing styles, as well as to characters who we might identify with.
But I have bonded with many novels and writers since I was young. (And that’s a long ‘since’.) Here are some favorite examples, in roughly chronological order. I’ve also noted what my frequently reliable memory tells me about how I first heard about each one.
1. A CONFERERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. This is a great comic novel about eccentric outsider Ignatius Reilly. The author couldn’t get it published and commited suicide. His mother shopped the novel to many publishers and eventually placed it with Louisiana State University Press. I saw her and the editor who bought it on a TV talk show.
2. THE CORNISH TRILOGY by Robertson Davies. Three novels that delve into the realms of art and human feelings, with fascinating sub-topics and a dash of humor. Davies was profiled in People Magazine. There was a picture of him in his old fashioned clothes, with his long while beard, head thrown back as he laughed. Anybody who looked like that had to write great books.
3. THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE GRAPE by John Fante. This story of a man and his difficult father is told with spare prose and plenty of dialogue. I was already reading Charles Bukowski and learned that Fante was a major influence on his writing. That led me to buy it and I wasn’t disappointed.
4. THE AUTHENTIC DEATH OF HENDRY JONES by Charles Neider. It’s a slim paperback Western from 1956. While it reads somewhat like Westerns by Max Brand, Louis L’Amour or Elmore Leonard, it stands out because an oppressive sense of doom hangs over the entire story. Neider also edited a collectioin of Samuel Clemens, THE TRAVELS OF MARK TWAIN. The cowboy story was sent to me by a longtime friend who lives outside Chicago. I thank him.
5. THE BEAUTIFUL ROOM IS EMPTY by Edmund White. This autobiographical fiction concerns the life of a gay man in America in the 50s and 60s. The varied characters and locales provide a kalidoscopic view of the times. I got it based on reading for years that White was a fine author.
So there you have it. Five novels that I was led to by as many different paths. I hope this steers others to them as well.
April 23rd, 2007 at 2:38 am
I tried for a long time to dope this out but I kept getting mired down wondering what kind of person I am, which would be the key to finding out which novels most influenced me. The only novel I was completely sure about was THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, which I read in 5th grade.
Gotta get bck to it someday.
But I did happen to re-read a book some time ago that got me to thinking:
For starters, my best friend is by any objective standard a Failure: a year or two older than me, he’s divorced, lives with his mother, no girlfriend, and all his life he’s seemed to have a knack for getting jobs that don’t pay him or fold up in a year or two — now is that a Failure or isn’t it? Never mind that the jobs he gets all involve helping the needy, or that he reads books of religious theory, biblical study and philosophy that I couldn’t begin to get my mind around, or that he married the girl I wanted to marry in college. The man is pushing 60 with no pension in sight, and that’s failure. Isn’t it?
Back in High School, some time around ’65, he loaned me a book: THE RAZOR’S EDGE, by Somerset Maugham. I didn’t think much of it but I read it through because he was my friend, though at the time I was more interested in Hammett, Chandler and Ian Fleming, and a book with no fist-fights or shoot-outs seemed a waste of pages to me. In recent years, however, I’ve come to appreciate Maugham’s writing a bit more. It started with reading CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY which was turned into a bleak, violent film noir by Robert Siodmack in the 40s. Then THE NARROW CORNER, a south-seas adventure in the Joseph Conrad tradition. And on and on. Well I finally decided to re-read THE RAZOR’S EDGE, and all these years later it came as a minor revelation because the story centers around a man who rejects the traditional goals in life (marriage, wealth, employment, security) to pursue pure Learning: to find out where the soul goes after death and what God meant by creating the universe… that sort of thing.
And as I was reading this, I suddenly knew my best friend — this man I’ve known for years — a little better. I understood how much this book he read 40 years ago must have influenced him, and shaped the course of his life. When he loaned me this book, he was showing me his future, but neither of us knew it. And I don’t for a moment imagine that he’s discovered any cosmic secrets, but I see now why looking for the answers is so important to him.
Funny how something’s been in front of me all these years, and it took re-reading a book to make me see it….