"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." - Kafka

    I love books. Books teach me, entertain me, make life worth living. I learn something from every book I read, so there's a way in which I'm changed by every book I read, but there are a few books which have changed me in a more profound way. This is the short list of books that have changed my life. Each of these has spoken to me on some very deep, personal level, and changed who I was as a person. It's an experience not unlike falling in love, and my favorite part about it is that it isn't over. I can't wait to discover more books like these. These are what I have discovered so far:

The Ishmael Trilogy by Daniel Quinn

 

     An introduction to a school of thought. To succinctly describe these books: a telepathic gorilla shows you how the entirety of human civilization has been a mistake. That's the biggest hurdle to letting these books touch you, so might as well get it out of the way early. These books genuinely changed my perception of everything, and, as one of the cover blurbs notes, books can now be divided into two categories: books I read before Ishmael, and books I read after Ishmael. I think I would be doing them an injustice by trying to summarize them, so let me just get you in the neighborhood, and then please: read them yourself. I would recommend any of the books on this list to anyone (with one exception, as you will see), but there's really no great harm in taking or leaving them. The Quinn books are different. Whether you accept or reject them, everyone should be exposed to these ideas.
 
     They are presented as novels, but they are didactic books. Daniel Quinn struggled for years on how best to convey his ideas, and the presentation went through many different formats before settling on the telepathic gorilla novel. Why? I don't know. It worked, so that's all the justification needed. It begins with a newspaper ad: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." I can probably guess your reaction to the 'save the world' bit, because it was mine: a roll of the eyes, dismissal if not hostility. Just let him have his say, that's all I ask. He is serious. It works.
 
     Some people are very hostile to these books, so if you read them and you react that way, that's fine. We're different and that's ok. If you're reading this, you're probably a friend of mine, and I'm not sure how we became friends with such radically different world views, but it's ok. I don't mind. That's one of the ideas presented in the book. We don't all have to think the same way. Besides that, major themes include ecology and sustainability, but if that turns you off, that's ok too. Before I read this book, I was a nihilist, and those things were a joke to me. Nihilism was not a label to me, and I was not a t-shirt philosopher. You can check out my post from a few days ago about my drug use to get some idea of how I got there (and some of the other books on this list will also help), but believe me, my mind was darker than dark. Justifiably so; most people just don't allow themselves an honest look at the world. I delved deep into the darkness of the human condition. Drugs, hate, the Holocaust, Vietnam, slavery, pornography, prostitution, genocide, rape, chaos, murder... these things were my stock in trade. I studied them, came to know them well, and I did it with a smile, because well... it's that or suicide. The only other option, the one most people take, is denial. That's the world we live in. Ishmael acknowledges this. I had reached that point, but concluded that there was no way out, and humanity was a failed species. Just like almost every other species this planet has produced.
 
     Daniel Quinn's books changed my mind. I cannot give them a higher recommendation than that. I'm not going to tell you they will change your mind too. But I will say that they can. Those things I described, that's all still true, and the world is still a twisted, evil place. But there is another way. I didn't think there was, but he showed me.
          
     Ishmael actually is pretty simplified in some ways, but for one, that's ok. It's the beginning of a journey, not the end. And also, that's why he wrote two more. The Story of B presents a lot of the same ideas in a much more harsh, aggressive way, because Quinn discovered that a lot of people weren't getting what he was saying in Ishmael. He drives the point home even harder. My Ishmael has a twelve year old girl as the protagonist, because really, that's what we need. An idea this basic needs to be able to be understood by a child. This is not for the classrooms and the libraries. This is for real life, the kind we live every day. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. Just read them and decide for yourself.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

 
     The book that launched the career of one of our most respected evolutionary biologists, as well as one of our most outspoken atheists. Whatever backlash being a proud atheist has gotten in recent years, it's a noble and wonderful thing to be (one of my older posts expands on this). However, when this book was written, that was not at all what Richard Dawkins was about, and I think that's an important distinction. He became a crusader for atheism because of the way theists reacted to his work, in particular this book.
 
     It changed my life in this way: I was raised in a very Christian environment. I went to church every day, and like Steve Harvey, when I say every day I mean every day. My school was at my church. This was a very fundamentalist style of Christianity with all that entails. Indoctrinated with this kind of conditioning from as early as I can remember, it was hard for me to break away from it, psychologically. I always had this nagging fear of hellfire in the back of my mind. I think that's understandable. Tell a child that if they don't believe certain things they're going to be tortured forever, and I mean really tortured, think of the worst thing you can and multiply it by a million and it never stops kind of tortured, it kind of makes Freddy Krueger seem like a pussy. Creationism is the backbone of this belief system. There's lots of reasons not to believe in God, but not so fast. Just how do you think you got here?
 
     I know creationism is silly nonsense, but you have to understand the state of mind of people within this system. It uses internally consistent logic and self-reinforcement to present evolution as the wacky belief. Darwin's name is dragged through the mud. We're told over and over and over again that a transitional fossil has never been found, that Noah's ark has been found, that evolution is a conspiracy. This all seems so stupid now, but when it's all you've ever been told and it's all anyone you've ever met believes, what are you going to do? You're actively taught that evolutionists are wicked, deluded idiots, and well, if you don't like it you can burn in Hell forever.
      
     The Selfish Gene is the book that broke me out of that prison. I read it, and Dawkins was able to communicate his work so well, it was as if my eyes were opened. "Dear god," I said "evolution is true!" Yes, it certainly is. I had already rejected God by that point, but this book was what finally gave me peace of mind. The Christian machine had done its work too well in establishing creationism as the keystone of its belief. If you take it away, the whole Jenga tower falls, because evolution is based on suffering and death. As Dawkins himself says in another book:  
 
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." 
         
     This reality was totally incompatible with any concept of God as it had been presented to me. Evolution occurred, therefore, I need not fear Hell. As bleak as it may seem, remember, I was reading that as a nihilist. It perfectly described the world as I observed it, and still do. We must simply take joy in the fact that we have lucked out. When you look at the real odds of not only existing in the first place, but existing in a state where we can be happy and enjoy life, they are so astronomically small that the theist calls them impossible. And yet here we are. This fills me with numinous awe. This is where I find wonder and magic in the world. What is god in the face of reality? An insult. An almighty creator is just a pathetic dumbing down of an indifferent universe. That's my religion. The Selfish Gene is what gave me that, and what started me down the path of study of evolution, which to this day can make me well up with the overpowering awesomeness of it all.
     

Maus by Art Spiegelman

 

     Maus is cartoonist Art Spiegelman's record of his father, Vladek's, survival in Auschwitz. It's famous for its animal depictions: Jews are mice, Germans cats, Poles pigs, Americans dogs, etc. That kind of fades into the background when you read it, because it's such a human story. Maus is one of the most genuine, heartfelt things I have ever read. It is so honest that you can't classify it as anything. It's not a graphic novel, it's not a memoir, it's not history (although it is all these things). Maus is Maus. We've all heard of the Holocaust, but it is truly incomprehensible to anyone who didn't experience it. Because Maus is so nakedly honest, and because Art was struggling to understand the meaning of these events himself, it is an approach to something that's unapproachable. I don't think it is a singular event, comparable things have happened, but it is so bad that it is, to a nihilist such as myself, an event akin to the crucifixion/resurrection to a Christian. Something which both defines and justifies a world view.

      

     Few people will allow the magnitude of what happened into their hearts and minds, because of what it implies. The Holocaust, to truly understand it, shatters our concept of God. It shatters our concept of nations. It shatters our concept of brotherhood and human benevolence. And however that makes you feel, and whatever that implies to you, you're just going to have to deal with it. Because it happened. It's reality. There's nothing to be learned from it, except maybe a shallow "Never again.", which we did not learn, as genocide still occurs to this day all around the world. Maus was my doorway to that. I've read a lot about the Holocaust, and now that knowledge, along with evolution, allows me to say with utmost confidence that there's no god. I don't think. I know. Maus remains one of the best things I've read on the subject, I would say Maus and the works of Primo Levi are the most essential.  

      

     There's nothing good to be gained from this knowledge, but sadly, that doesn't make it go away. As sick as it is, this is the world we live in, and until we admit it, we are powerless to escape it. It still goes on. The American continent was founded on a genocide of thirteen million indigenous people (or "Indians" as the settlers called them), bigger than Hitler's genocide. And who mourns for them? What is to be gained in the forgetting? Understanding the depravity and chaos of our species as I understand it is key to also understanding just why those Daniel Quinn books were so important to me. So shines a good deed in a weary world...

 

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

 
   It might be more accurate to say that David Foster Wallace changed me, rather than any particular thing he wrote. He's special to me, and I could probably have included a few different things here. "This Is Water" changed me, but it's a speech, not a book. The title essay of Consider the Lobster changed a couple things about me. I first read Infinite Jest in 2005, during a very difficult time in my life, and it helped me in ways I find it hard to put into words. But I'm listing The Pale King.
      
     The Pale King is difficult to read. It's difficult to read for the usual DFW reasons: the complexity of his language, his syntax, the way he could "write whole sentences that make you feel like you can't breath". It's also difficult to read because it's unfinished. The question of structure was really anyone's guess. The original manuscript was a series of loosely if at all connected chapters with no indication as to how they were going to be ordered. It's also difficult to read because it was left unfinished on occasion of his suicide. As I mentioned, DFW was a very special writer to me, I connected with him on a level that I don't with most authors. I took his death very hard. I went on a drinking binge that almost killed me (not exactly uncharacteristic behavior, but this was a really bad one, even for me).
 
     Besides just grieving over losing him, the reason his death hit me so hard was it brought up a very deep despair in me. He was an outsider like I was an outsider, and although our lives were not remotely similar, I felt that our minds were. That was why he was such an important writer to me. And he was making it work in spite of the isolation that I related to so well. His suicide meant failure. His suicide reflected my own. I didn't really share that with anyone then, and I moved on. After all, I didn't know him. I have strong opinions on suicide, because I've experienced losing people that way, but in a strange way, this affected me more than those. Losing people I knew to suicide was heartbreaking, but I can view those as mistakes. I can grieve and move on. Someone I felt that sort of kinship to was different, but I had to look at it the same way. He was selfish and he made a mistake. It never quite sat right with me. But what choice did I have?
 
     When I read The Pale King years later, I came full circle with those emotions. It deals primarily with despair, boredom, and emptiness. There's some explicit talk about suicide. It almost dares you to understand it. One good example is DFW breaking the fourth wall and addressing the reader directly as "David Foster Wallace, author of The Pale King", but in light of what happened, you know he isn't really being himself. He says the book is a memoir, that everything in it really and literally happened, and that the legal disclaimer about the events and characters being fictional is included for legal reasons, but trust him, it's all true. Except it isn't. You know all the talk about the legal wranglings with his publisher were just part of the story, because no one, least of all his publisher, even saw page one of The Pale King until after he was dead.
 
     The book itself reads like an elaborate suicide note. Was this a side effect of being written by a man who did eventually commit suicide? If anyone would go through and revise his manuscript to reflect his decision to take his own life, David Foster Wallace is that man. I don't know what it all means. But reading it finally closed the door on grieving for DFW's death, and by extension, my own feelings of despair and emptiness. Because as much as he meant to me, he was as fragile as anyone else. One of my heroes is dead, and I'm still here. The way his suicide affected me is probably similar to the way I've heard some people say they were affected by Kurt Cobain's suicide, and while I won't run down DFW for what he did (I'd consider his suicide closer in spirit to Joseph Merrick than Cobain), the fact that he did it made me confront some hard truths about myself. And I'm stronger for it.

IT by Stephen King

     Hey, what's this doing here? Yes, even Stephen King can make a list of books that changed my life. I love Stephen King and make no apologies for it. If I could have one author's work on a desert island, it would absolutely be him (I'm actually wearing a Pet Sematary shirt even as I write this). There are so many important truths to be gleaned from King's work ("Delah..." as the Can-Toi might say), but IT is on this list for one simple and very good reason. This is the book that made me love reading. Without this, the rest of this list wouldn't be here. No Stephen King? No Tolkien, no Twain, no H.G. Wells, no Kafka, no Vonnegut, no Amis, no Cormac McCarthy, no Updike, no Joyce, no Hemingway, no Pynchon, no Vollmann, no Clive Barker, no me. That's not literally true, I'm sure I would have found some other inroad, but that's the way it went down. I think everyone who truly loves reading has the door opened for them that way. For Steve King himself it was Lord of the Flies, and I think if I told him that he was to me what Golding was to him, he'd probably find that a pretty fine compliment.
 
     This was the book that made me love a good yarn. It made me love an epic. I used to hate the ending until I read Lovecraft, then I got it. And hey, make no mistake, this book is fucking terrifying. It's not easy to scare me with a book, but this one did it. I still read it about once a year.

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all." -
Oscar Wilde

    

Hogg by Samuel Delany

 

     I debated over whether to include this, but what am I doing here if I'm not telling the truth, so here it is. The reason I might not want to include it is for fear that somebody might read it. If you recall, earlier I said there would be one book that I wasn't comfortable recommending, and this is it. Hogg is porn, but that's like saying Caligula was quirky. Hogg is the sickest thing I've ever read and no fooling. And remember, I'm the guy who's into that sort of thing, so as someone who's actively gone out and tried to find the most perverse stories on the internet, once in a while something can match this, but nothing - nothing - can top it. It puts De Sade to shame. I've said that Peter Jackson's Braindead is the goriest movie ever made or that ever will be, because you could not go further over the top than that. All you could do is do something on that level for longer. Hogg is like that.

      

     And this is a published novel by a respected author. The fact that it exists is truly amazing. Delany is a great writer; a wild, insane gay black man who started out in sci fi but then branched out into all sorts of stuff. Hogg was completed just days before the Stonewall Riots, so that's one interpretation: it's a primal scream at being gay in a world with no gay rights. Another option: he just wanted to see if he could get something like this published (it took a long time). I think the fact that the cover of the first edition is a Rorschach blot is significant. What you get out of Hogg depends on what you bring to it. It changed me because you can't read it and not be changed. You will never, ever forget it (if you can get through it).

      

     Some of the points Hogg makes are similar to what Bret Ellis would say with American Psycho decades later, about the nature of man, and the consequences of choice. But what if American Psycho had been just rape and murder? I won't quote extended passages, but one of the most affecting things Hogg (the character) says is "There's what a man wants, what is, and what should be. And ain't one of 'em got shit to do with any other. Unless you make it." That's a profound truth. But how Hogg changed my life is that I went digging for the basest sexual perversion. And I found it. And now what do I do with it? What does it mean that this book exists? What does it mean that I'm reading it? It will definitely make any reader ask hard  questions about their own sexuality, because most anyone will be titillated by something here, there's just so much going on. And what does that mean? It's a very aggressively confrontational piece of work, in that way similar to Michael Haneke's film Funny Games. Who are we and what are we doing here?

      

     Hogg is a trial by fire. I could expand more on what I've learned from it, but I won't in mixed company. Just know that if what I've said here makes it sound like something you want to read, I kind of doubt it. You just think you do. But if you go ahead and read it, don't say I didn't warn you.

  

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

 
     This is the most recent addition to the list. I read this several years ago, and it was a great story, like everything I've read from McCarthy. A bleak story. But I had to read it again, and it didn't really get into me and change me until I had a child and changed some other things about my world view. There are great reasons not to have children. From overpopulation to a desire not to subject someone to this sick world (survivor Imre Kertész's Kaddish For an Unborn Child is an absolutely heartrending case for the latter reason). I do think, biologically, that if you don't do it, you're just putting a gun to the head of your species. I understand the impulse, believe me. It looks hopeless.

    Now to bring this full circle, remember I said books can be classified "before Ishmael" and "after Ishmael"? I've now read The Road under both conditions, and the way it affected me changed completely. Ishmael is an empowering book. It truly whips up your spirit. The problem is that when you settle back down a little it becomes "...What do I do?" The world is a juggernaut of evil and it seems like you will never be able to stand against it. You'll just be steamrolled under in the face of insurmountable odds.
 
     Reading Ishmael, having my daughter, and then reading The Road again showed me what to do. You carry the fire. You put one foot in front of the other, and no matter what happens, you don't stop. No matter how bleak it looks, until it's over, you don't stop. Because all you need is that seed. That fire. You close your eyes, and you let it go, and what happens happens, because as long as someone is carrying the fire, hope is not lost. You fight a good fight. You finish your course. You keep the faith. That's it.