Books That I've Found To Be Influential...

Feh. If everybody's doing it, I feel obligated.

Not in order...

  1. Rick Perlstein - Nixonland. I'm only about 300 pages into this monster, but already, this is a perception-changing book. Unsurprisingly, there's a lot of information about Nixon himself, but, as you can tell by the title, the focus is really on the political landscape of 1960's USA, and what that meant for Nixon: how he navigated it, responded to it, formed it. The author will go pages without even mentioning Nixon, while describing how Lyndon Johnson was handling some aspect of the Vietnam war, or how Bobby Kennedy was reacting to the riots, or how MLK was received in this or that city, etc.. And he has a dry and darkly funny writing style, so it's an entertaining read. Because of that, I've learned more about the 60's from the first half of this book than I have in my past 39.5 years. Since I didn't live through it all, my mental images of the mid-late 60's are those I've seen in countless musical retrospectives, Vietnam movies, footage of MLK speaking, and sit-coms. But none of those things really describe how violent and insane things got in cites all across America - riots, bombings, actual calls for revolution, the New Left, the string of assassinations - and how all that gave rise to the politics of resentment (and finally, how Nixon took advantage of it all). And, if a history lesson can be graded on how it helps you make sense of the present, this one is among the best: seeing how it was formed makes the apparently-insane politics of today's right wing much more understandable. Ex. why do they think "the left" is a bunch of seditious America-hating freaks? Because, in the late 60's, that wasn't too much of a stretch. Someone needs to tell them it's not 1967 anymore, however.
  2. Matt Ridley - The Red Queen. It's an exploration of the state of evolutionary biology (circa 1994) with an emphasis on sex: why it exists, how it could have evolved, what it accomplishes, what are the alternatives, etc.. This one kicked off a multi-year period where I only read books on evolutionary biology.
  3. Jerzy Kosinski - The Painted Bird. I read this one when I was 15 or so. It's the story of a boy wandering through eastern Europe during WWII... that's nearly all I remember. Nearly. I also remember one line: when people claim to know me, I can no longer act freely. (That's how I remember it, at least.) That line has resonated with me for decades. To me, it's about the cages we create for ourselves by unintentionally creating expectations in others. I'd explain it more thoroughly, but then, well, you'd know me better. And you know where that leads. I've already said too much.
  4. City Of Saints And Madmen - Jeff VanderMeer - It's a collection of short stories, novellas, fictional travel brochures, fictional historical essays, fictional biography, etc. all revolving around a fictional city called "Ambergris". While most of the pieces were written separately as stand-alone fiction, and only later put together in book form, because of their shared location, they work as a single book (though an unconventional, non-linear book). And, right in the middle of it, VanderMeer executes a couple of nifty self-referential back flips which sends the narration into our world, and then into a second(?) Ambergris which is fictional to the characters in the first Ambergris. I think. I actually burst out a giddy "Holy Fuck!" when I hit that section.
  5. James Gleick – Chaos - This got me into a multi-year exploration of fractals, which lead me to release my first public computer application (a fractal explorer), which taught me a lot about writing apps for other people, which came in handy when I started my own software company. Plus, you know, pretty pictures.
  6. Edward Gorey – The Ghastlycrumb Tinies. Read it for yourself. It's short.
  7. Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel. A thought-provoking, if largely speculative (and sometimes strained), attempt to explain why "western" civilization progressed so rapidly while others lagged. It's a nice history of the last ten thousand years or so, too.
  8. R. Crumb - Genesis. I've tried to read the Bible before, but found it as interesting as trying to read the complete set of service manuals for an IBM 360. But, Crumb took just the one book, Genesis, illustrated it, and made it interesting - without mocking it or trying to spice it up in any way. It's just Genesis, but with pictures. Now I know the ultimate source of a few hundred references that had previously just gone over my head.
  9. e e cummings - Complete. For many years, I tried to be a poet - as do many people of a certain age - and this book was my biggest inspiration. I tried hard to form typographic copies of whatever was in my head, and I got to a point where I could do that pretty reliably. But still, I sucked. The difference between me and e e was that Cummings wasn't just about spacing and clever punctuation. Cummings, unlike me and his zillions of other college-age imitators, was very musical, truly clever, and he was a pioneer - that cut-up, spaced-out, cleverly-formatted thing is his, so you can't do his tricks and not expect your readers to think "oh great, here's another fan of Cummings." And most importantly: Cummings wasn't a self-absorbed teenager. Yes, his style was as indulgent as could be, and some of his subject matter was silly, but he was a mature writer, not an adolescent wailing at the cruel injustices of his little world. He wasn't hung up on himself; he talked about the world around him as an observer, or a participant, and not as a confused victim. That's why he remains interesting, and I refuse to read the crap I wrote.
  10. Tolkien - The Lord Of The Rings. It's hard to say I've been influenced by this - it's not a unique source of great themes to live by; I don't collect swords; I don't speak Elvish; I don't write fantasy novels. On the other hand, this is the only book I've read five times. And I still find new things in it, every time. Also, our cat Tricksey's name is from Gollum - so, maybe a little influence. I haven't re-read it since the movies came out, but I am nearly ready to.

I should probably add Carl Sagan's Cosmos to this list, since it was my favorite book for many years as a precocious tween. I still have my original copy, fading away on the bookshelf downstairs. I wonder if it's still as good as it was when I was 11...

3 thoughts on “Books That I've Found To Be Influential...

  1. The Grand Panjandrum

    Your take on the 60’s is interesting. As someone who was came of age in the 60’s what strikes is that I didn’t really have a sense that the wheels could come off at any moment. But when you’re 17 nothing can touch you. Until it does.

  2. Ugh

    Nixonland really does explain just about everything in politics today, especially on the GOP side. I was reading it during the campaign and I was amazed at the way the rhetoric Nixon spewed in the 1960s was pretty much the same as that coming out of the McCain/Palin campaign.

  3. The Modesto Kid

    I feel conflicted about not having done a “Books I’ve found to be influential” post… But I feel like, well, read my archives, that’s one of the main focusses of my blog, it would be kind of redundant…

    I liked the Crumb Genesis a whole lot but wouldn’t necessarily call it influential for me — The Bible, yeah, definitely, and it’s nice to have Crumb’s images in addition to the text. I wish he would illustrate the books of Samuel.

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