Not the best literature from the past 200 years.
Not the most important novels,
Not the books that most changed history but a list of:
The books that taught me how to calm down and love.
The books that taught me about style and living.
The books that made me feel like a creep for daring to write
another sentence.
The books that changed my artistic eye.
The books that remind me what is fun about life.
I’m pretty sure it is a poem:
Ruth Benedict Patterns of Culture
Edward Tufte Envisioning Information
Mark Auge Non-Places
Joseph Mitchell Joe Gould’s Secret
Werner Herzog Of Walking on Ice
Huston Smith The World’s Religions
Patrick Leigh Fermor A Time of Gifts
Gregory Bouillier The Mystery Guest
Cesar Aira Ghosts
Yevgeny Zamyatin We
Maggie Nelson Jane A Murder and The Art of
Cruelty
Lydia Davis, The Collected Works
Laurence Durrell The Alexandria
Quartet—Justine, Balthzar, Mount Olive, Clea
Laszlo Krasnahoraki’s
The Melancholy of Resistance
Toni Morrison A Mercy
Robert Walser Microscripts
Alexander Dumas The
Count of Monte Cristo
Albert Cossery The Jokers
James Joyce The Dubliners
Andrew Moore Detroit Disassembled
Robert Frank The Americans
Lee Friedlander Self-Portrait
Walker Evans Many Are Called
Graham Roumieu, Bigfoot: I Not Dead and Me Write Book: It Bigfoot
Memoir
Legs McNeil Please
Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
Tennessee Williams 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays
Sarah Ruhl Eurydice
Pema Chodron The
Places That Scare You
Maira Kalman, all
titles
Diana Vreeland D.V
Billy Collins Sailing Alone Around the Room
ee cummings 73 Poems
Michael Ondaatje The
Collected Works of Billy the Kid
And
Charles Simic Dime Store Alchemy
