I did not grow up surrounded by literature. My working class family was much more likely to watch television than to sit down with Jane Austen or Dickens. Of course we had books in the house, books that were prized, in fact. But they generally fell into two categories: educational or religious.
Like many southern migrants making their way in the North, religiosity was deeply rooted, so our shelves were stuffed with Bibles, commentaries on the Bible, and what we called “missionary books.” These were usually dramatic stories of brave, devout white Americans saving brown, “overseas” communities for Jesus.
And my parents, like many working class people, bought a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica out of an irrepressible hope that often gets named “aspiration.” I grew bored with the missionary books quickly, but I poured over those volumes of the Britannica regularly. In addition to learning about bats, the Napoleonic Wars, and the biology of human sexual reproduction, I read all about the great works of Western literature. I never really read the books themselves, however.
My literary passions were devoted to comic books, horror films, and well, books about horror films. Eventually I added, like many boys in my situation, detective stories, beginning with those dusk blue Hardy Boys books, then, later, Sherlock Holmes. I admired Holmes’s arrogant intellect from afar. An under-confident kid sometimes looks to bullies for his heroes.
Up to this point, the books I’d read had captured my interest, but nothing except for Spider-Man and monster movies (I’d developed an early, lasting passion for Hammer Studios’ gothic horror films in particular) had truly fired my imagination.
Then I came across a ragged collection of H.P. Lovecraft and the fuse was lit. The lurid, over-written prose and claustrophobic mood of cosmic dread exploded in my young brain and made me, for the first time, actually love the written word. A few, brief evolutionary leaps after that, I started being able to imagine myself as a writer.
In the ensuing years, my commitment to the discipline of doing my own writing waxed and waned, but I never stopped reading. I still chase that fix Lovecraft’s tentacled words had injected into my youthful imagination.
Hopefully, I’ve matured a bit since then. And hopefully that process is reflected in the subsequent stories that have thrown me to the floor as H.P. once did.
Kafka did it, first with his tragedy of Red Peter, the educated ape in “A Report To an Academy.” Then he struck again, in a more sustained, excruciating journey to nowhere as I followed K. along his hopeless pilgrimage to The Castle.
As a perpetually-flailing believer, the paradox of Flannery O’Connor’s caustic wit working in perfect harmony with her devout Catholicism made me understand my own contradictions more than anyone. I can live in my own skin a lot more comfortably after having read “Good Country People.”
Cynthia Ozick’s imagination, equal parts theological and surrealistic, also shook the way I think about God. “The Pagan Rabbi,” “Bloodshed,” and the novel The Cannibal Galaxy always leave me in the religious awe of unresolved paradox. Perhaps that’s what God is.
Jonathan Lethem had the audacity to take me inside a Tourettic brain in Motherless Brooklyn, taking the beloved detective story of my youth to places Conan Doyle could never dream of by hitching the story to one the singular voices in literature.
Samuel R. Delaney’s heady, literate science fiction classic, The Einstein Intersection was dense, daunting and challenged me to keep up. I did, barely, and will never think of mythology and the human spirit the same way.
And finally, most unexpectedly of all, is Bernard Malamud. No writer has influenced my own writing so much as him. In his tightly constructed stories (every syllable has purpose), Malamud created a universe that paid loving, painful homage to desperate working people and I saw something of my own life in those tales. In my imagination, I see Malamud writing a story about my parents scratching together the cash for a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
I’ve read “A Summer’s Reading” hundreds of times by now, and with each visit, something new emerges as I dissolve into tears at the climax of George Stoyanovich’s liberation, won by reading for reading’s sake. Malamud wrote perfect stories, and set a standard against which I will never measure up. His stories are nonetheless filled with desperate hope, however, so I’m inspired to keep trying.
What are the books that made you who you are today?
Alright here goes. Tolkien was read to me at an early age, and his vivid descriptions and worldbuilding caught me up. I quickly was caught by swashbuckling stories, particularly by Edgar rice Burroughs (I’m named after John Carter of mars, so the link was early). I loved Sherlock Holmes as well, and as far as I can recollect I’ve read every story. The Great Brain books showed me how fun writing, and mischief, could be. As I got older, i tried classics and read the count of monte cristo at 15, which as not only a personal accomplishment but an insight into the wonderful drama of life. Dune sparked my intellect in ways nothing else had, into philosophy, religion, politics, etc. I read history from a young age as well but in college was truly caught up by will Durants history of civilization.
There were more, especially as I went into my all too brief teaching career, like Camus, Melville (moby-dick is now my favorite novel), and of course Orwell, one of my hero’s, and Hannah Arendt, whose work I found incredibly interesting in my mid 20’s. But that would be a much longer response ;)
Writers more than books for me. Probably Paul Daughtery (sports columnist) gave me some inspiration about how rich writing could be. Later Bob Greene (also a newspaper guy). But I'd like to think that David Gutterson and Wendell Berry are the shadows I stand in and from who I try to throw a similar shadow. Ambitious but it's a target. Lol. Thanks for the prompt.