Satie’s Gnossienne, Forking Paths, and Time’s Ever Presence

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art, Erwin Schrodinger, Gnnossienne, Jorge Luis Borges, literature, music, past, Philosophy, quotations, Rilke, Satie, The Garden of Forking Paths, time

Japanese Style Landscape Paul Ranson

Time-travelling—that’s what it feels like when listening to Erik Satie’s Gnossienne. When I close my eyes and let the music move me, I’m transported to faraway places and distant times. I can see the mist rising from the river, the arched bridges, the damp gray stones of gothic towers tilting toward sullen skies. I can feel the cool breath of the river, smell the sweet-dank dampness of rain-drenched streets, hear the clatter of distant hoofs on cobblestones. It’s almost as if I’ve entered some strangely familiar dreamscape, or the distant landscape of an idealized past.

These dark, insistent, melancholy notes play us and ply us across space and time in rapturous eloquence. It reminds us that we share so much of our common past, our common humanity, to the art and music and literature that inspires us.

I’m reminded of the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges, and this particular quote:

“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries –embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and yet in others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words but am in error, a phantom Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures. — Jorge Luis Borges, from “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Collected Fictions. (Penguin Books September 1, 1999) Originally published 1941.

And also, this from Rilke:

Even the past is still a being in the fullness of its occurrence, if only it is understood not according to its content but by means of its intensity, and we–members of a world that generates movement upon movement, force upon force, and seems to cascade inexorably into less and less visible things–we are forced to rely upon the past’s superior visibility if we want to gain an image of the now muted magnificence that still surrounds us today. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “On Life and Living,” The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke, ed. and trans. Ulrich Baer (Modern Library, 2005)

And finally, from a Nobel Prize winning physicist, this:

“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world’.

Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering.
And not merely ‘some day’: now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.”
― Erwin Schrödinger,

Franz Wright: Like Touching a Bird’s Exposed Heart

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Franz Wright, inspiration, literature, Love, poem, poetry, Romance

Reading this poem on Vale of Soul-Making struck me to the core, it is so exquisite.

That mingling of the erotic with child-like wonder.

That last line, so unexpected. So perfect.

Untitled

This was the first time I knelt
and with my lips, frightened, kissed
the lit inwardly pink petaled lips.

It was like touching a bird’s exposed heart
with your tongue.

Summer dawn flowing into the room parting the
curtains—the lamps dimming—breeze
rendered visible. Lightning,
and then soft applause
from the leaves . . .

Almost children, we lay asleep in love listening to the
rain.

We didn’t ask to be born.
— Franz Wright, “Untitled,” Earlier Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)

Are we not all like a bird’s beating heart waiting to be touched deeply?

We did not ask to be born. Yet here we are, out of nowhere, dropped into this world of wonder. How can we account for that? All we can do, given this gift of grace, is to keep parting all the tender petals before us till the core of who we are is revealed.

Still Open to the Beauty of the World

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beauty, books, faith, fiction, literature, Paul Harding, quotations, quote, Tinkers, Winter

Winter Landscape by Carol Collette

“Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it?

And as you split the frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will and His grace toward you that that is beautiful, and a part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home.

And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.

And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.” ― Paul Harding, Tinkers. (Bellevue Literary Press January 1, 2009) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2010

“Love After Love.” A Poem. A Feast.

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Derek Walcott, inspiration, life, literature, Love, poetry

Gertrude Fiske (1868 – 1961) American Impressionist

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Many thanks to Ken Chawkin and the bread crumbs he left that led me to this poem on his blog Uncarved Block.

Reading it moved me deeply. One wonders if the whole purpose of our life journey is to lead us to that place where we see ourselves, finally, “face to face,” and greet ourselves with love and elation in this ultimate homecoming.

Ken describes his own tender home-coming on his website and provides many interesting links about Walcott, the Nobel Prize winning poet and artist.

In the video below you can listen to Walcott reading his poem from his island home on St. Lucia. You don’t want to miss this.

Five Debut Novels Worth Sampling

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authors, book review, books, Entertainment, fiction, literature, Novel, novels, Reading, writing

I’ve been putting together a reading list of recently published debut novels that have been making a splash in the publishing world. Perhaps not surprising, given I’m looking for a publisher for my own debut novel.

What is surprising is how many there are, and how intriguing they all sound. So much so I’ve had a hard time winnowing the list down to a readable top five. What helped was being able to download free sample chapters from Amazon onto my Kindle.

Here’s what I came up with.

 There, There – by Tommy Orange

This one is first on my list because I’m already 2/3 through it. And I have to say, it’s living up to the hype, and a lot of it there is: “Orange writes the way the best rappers rap, the way the finest taggers tag. His is a bold aesthetic of exhilaration and, yes, rage.” (Claire Vaye Watkins, Poets & writers, July/August, 218)

“Let’s get this out of the way: Tommy Orange’s debut novel, There There, should probably be on reading lists for every creative writing program in this country. It is a master class in style, form and narrative voice. Orange, who is from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, utilizes first, second and third-person narration to incredible effect, creating a multi-voiced novel that effectively reflects an entire community. . . .” (Alicia Elliott, The Globe and Mail)

There, There is about urban Indians living in Oakland, California, who know “the sound of the freeway better than [they] do rivers … the smell of gas and freshly wet concrete and burned rubber better than [they] do the smell of cedar or sage…”

Each of its many characters are heading to an annual powow, which promises to be explosive, according to another reviewer: “[T]he plot accelerates until the novel explodes in a terrifying mess of violence. Technically, it’s a dazzling, cinematic climax played out in quick-cut, rotating points of view. But its greater impact is emotional: a final, sorrowful demonstration of the pathological effects of centuries of abuse and degradation.” (Ron Charles, Washington Post)

Despite this, “even amid confusion and violence, there is the possibility for decency to assert itself,” and novel ends on a note of hope. Or so I’m promised (The Guardian).  I’ll let you know.

  Song of a Captive Bird by Jazmin Darznic

I was drawn to this book because it’s about the life of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad who “endures the scorn of her family and society to become one of Iran’s most prominent poets and a film director.” According to the Kirkus Review ” this novel is a “thrilling and provocative portrait of a powerful woman set against a sweeping panorama of Iranian history.”

“Song of a Captive Bird is a complex and beautiful rendering of that vanished country and its scattered people; a reminder of the power and purpose of art; and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out.” (Dina Nayeri, New York Times)

  The Incendiaries by K. O. Kwon

Laura Groff calls this novel “God-haunted.” It is a love story set on a contemporary college campus that “explores faith, religion, and the dangers of fundamentalism” (Poets $ Writers, July/August 2018) An escapee from North Korea who becomes a cult leader is another major character, with disastrous consequences, it seems.

Despite the fact this novel promises another explosive ending like There, There, which may have put me off, it was the prose from that sample chapter that drew me in and made me add it to my list. These intriguing bits added to its allure:

“Kwon’s novel is urgent in its timeliness, dizzyingly beautiful in its prose, and poignant in its discovery of three characters fractured by trauma, frantically trying to piece back together their lives. (USAToday)

“It is full of absences and silence. Its eerie, sombre power is more a product of what it doesn’t explain than of what it does. It’s the rare depiction of belief that doesn’t kill the thing it aspires to by trying too hard. It makes a space, and then steps away to let the mystery in.” (The New Yorker)

  Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin

“A fugitive from a Mexican cartel takes refuge in a forest preserve in the wilds of Virginia. . . .  An intense, visceral debut equal to the best that country noir has to offer.” So begins and ends a Kirkus Review of this debut novel.

I chose this as my fourth debut novel to read in order to get out of the city and into the wild. And also, I suspect, as a serious Justified fan, to get back into the hills of Appalachia with a soft-hearted and hard-fisted alpha male like Raylan Givens. I don’t know if the protaganist of Bearskin, Rice Moore, will live up to Raylan, but the sample chapter I read gives me hope.

Then there’s this: “Bearskin is visceral, raw, and compelling—filled with sights, smells, and sounds truly observed.  It’s a powerful debut and an absolute showcase of exceptional prose.  There are very few first novels when I feel compelled to circle brilliant passages, but James McLaughlin’s writing had me doing just that.”

  Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marsha Pessl

“Sharp, snappy fun for the literary-minded,” so deems the Kirkus Review, and that’s exactly why I chose this to be the last novel on my “top five” list, even though it doesn’t quite fit my criteria for “recent’ debut novels. This came out in 2006.

“Marisha Pessl’s dazzling debut sparked raves from critics and heralded the arrival of a vibrant new voice in American fiction. At the center of Special Topics in Calamity Physics is clever, deadpan Blue van Meer, who has a head full of literary, philosophical, scientific, and cinematic knowledge. But she could use some friends. Upon entering the elite St. Gallway School, she finds some—a clique of eccentrics known as the Bluebloods. One drowning and one hanging later, Blue finds herself puzzling out a byzantine murder mystery. Nabokov meets Donna Tartt (then invites the rest of the Western Canon to the party) in this novel—with visual aids drawn by the author—that has won over readers of all ages.” (Amazon)

I tried a sample chapter and decided this quirky, fun novel is just what I needed to top off this list, which is decidedly heavy in “not fun” topics.

Some strong runners-up on the lighter, fun side are:

The Ensemble

The Kiss Quotient

The Pisces

Let me if you’ve read any of these yet, and if so, what you thought. Also, if you know of any other debut novels I should add to my list.

 

The “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” in Fiction and Film

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editing, fiction, Film, literature, Novel, Outlander, Reading, revision, TV series, writing

What draws a reader into a story and compels her to keep tuning pages? This interests me both as a reader and a writer with a novel ready to publish. It interests me because so many novels I start I never finish. I’m beginning to wonder if the fault lies more with me as a reader than with the writer.

As a writer I’m used to reading my own work with a critical distance and a skeptical eye, which are essential to the purpose of revision, but deadly to the act of reading for enjoyment.  What’s essential there is what Coleridge coined “a willing suspension of disbelief,” or “poetic faith.”

But if what we bring to the table, instead of poetic faith, is a skeptical and critical disposition, the novel may be doomed before it’s ever given a chance to work its magic on us.

Perhaps the reason so many novels I pick up fall short is because I’m reading through the wrong lens, with a critical eye towards revision, toward rewriting the page in my own image, rather than that willing suspension of disbelief, allowing the writer to draw me into the story in her own way.

A case in point: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.

I had been looking for a steamy romance with a literary bent, having found nothing lately within either of those genres–romantic or literary–that held my interest.

Someone suggested I try the Outlander series. I was highly skeptical from the start. A time-travelling romance? It sounded far-fetched. But since I had nothing better to read and the book came with so many 5 star reviews and a huge fan-base, I decided to give it a try.

I was not impressed. The writing was fine, the characters okay, but the pacing was extremely slow. It wasn’t at all the book that I wanted to read and I kept thinking how to revise it to better hold my interest. But I kept reading because I wanted to get to the juicy parts, to see how the author and protagonist would handle the time gap, the sudden jolt 200 years back into the past. And I wanted to see who her love interest would  be.

Well, needless to say, I was disappointed again. Claire seemed barely phased by the fact she had been transported back 200 years. She saw it more as a logistical problem, how to get home, rather than “am I losing my mind, this can’t be happening” response I had imagined and felt would ring more true. Then when the first person she meets, a captain in the British army, tries to rape her, the whole thing seemed so implausible, I almost stopped reading right there.

But who would be her love interest? That question kept me going until I discovered it was this low-level member of a rebel band who had managed to get himself wounded, and was clearly several years her junior. If I had been writing the book I would have chosen the daring, hot-headed leader of the group, who while years older, seemed more exciting. Clearly this was not the book I was hoping to read and I set it aside.

But when the film series about the Outlander came out on TV, I decided to give it another try, and the film easily sucked me in. The music, the scenery, the costumes, the actors chosen to play each part, all were perfectly pitched to draw me in and sweep me away. The resistance I had initially for the series, and the critical distance I held it, melted away. The willing suspension of disbelief so needed for my viewing pleasure was in full force.

By the time the first season ended, I was so enthralled, I eagerly picked up the book again and began reading. This time I thoroughly enjoyed it and couldn’t understand why I hadn’t before.

I think we are more willing to suspend disbelief when viewing a movie than when reading a novel. The visual and auditory power of film-making does most of the work for us without the need to translate black letters on a white page into scenery or sounds. The musical score is an added bonus manipulating our emotions to match what the filmmaker wants us to feel, and when well-done it’s barely noticeable.

Much is required of both writer and filmmaker to make his or her creation “sing.” Both must learn their craft well and comply with the basic elements of story-telling, as I wrote about in my last post. But the filmmaker has more tools to entice the viewer into that willing suspension of disbelief needed to enjoy the film.

The writer has less to work with. So it’s essential for the reader, especially if the reader is a writer, to come to the work as a willing and eager partner. We must be willing to set aside our writerly prejudice to allow the story to work its magic on us.

Below are links to posts referenced here:

Sexy, Smart, Sweet, & Soulful

Speaking of Erotica . . .

Loss & Desire, and the Search for Something More in Life & Literature

 

 

Loss & Desire, and the Search for Something More, in Life & Literature

Tags

amwriting, desire, life, literature, loss, Novel, poetry, writing, writing process

These are the themes that run through so much of what I’m compelled to write about. No doubt because they are the great themes running through all the arts, through myth, religion, psychology–through life itself.

The poem below captures that so eloquently.

Meditation at Lagunitas

By Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

So much here resonates with me:

• how “each particular erases the luminous clarity of a general idea,”
• how each particular presence is “some tragic falling off from a first world of undivided light,”
• how “a word is elegy to what it signifies,”
• how “desire is full of endless distances,”
• including “the moments when body is as numinous as words.”

I wrote a series of blog posts several years ago about how these themes are developed in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Wordsworth’s Prelude, and Lacan’s Mirror State, starting with Some Tragic Falling Off into Difference and Desire.

I wrote in Our Quest for Wholeness:

Writers of fiction know that to create a compelling story that keeps readers turning pages we must:

• Create a protagonist with an overarching need or desire (derived from some sense of loss, of being wounded, or incomplete)
• beset by constant conflict that intensifies and delays achievement of that desire (to gain what was lost, find healing or wholeness)
• until that need or desire is eventually realized (or not), but either way,
  leaving the protagonist in a better place (happier, wiser, more whole) than where she had been before the story began,
• having learned something important or significant about herself, the world she lives in, or what it means to be human.

What drives the story and develops the character is a quest to return to wholeness, to regain what was lost. But what is regained is never simply what was lost, but “something more.” Some new realization– wisdom chiseled from the hard knocks and setbacks of a difficult journey, insights into human nature that will light her path moving forward.

Perhaps we find these stories so compelling because they parallel our own psychic development from the womb to maturity and beyond.

I should not have been surprised when rereading and editing my novel to find these themes repeated in each character’s journey from loss and desire to the search for “something more.”

But I was surprised. Perhaps even as we all are surprised to find it running through our own personal history and journeys. We are so close to it that even while we know it is there, we miss it in the particularity of the moment, in the ordinary humdrum of each day. We have to step back, way back, to see it, the path behind and before us. Even then, which fork will we take next? Which way will our lives unfold? It’s all part of the mystery of being, even being ourselves.

I’ll be exploring this more in future blog posts.

How Art Intensifies Life – Robinson on Writing, Metaphor, & the Sacred

Tags

authors, Gilead, interview, literature, Marilynn Robinson, Novel, writing

I came across this interview with Marilynne Robinson, who is one of America’s finest living writers, in an old edition of The Writer magazine when I was cleaning out my bookshelves.

I know now why I saved it, and why I will save it again. She speaks my language and the language of so many creative people I know. That she feels the same way about art, writing and the sacred as I do, is an affirmation. That she expresses it in ways that inspire me anew is a gift.

I hope her words will inspire you as well.

Excerpts from “Waiting for Gilead,” an Interview with Marilynn Robinson by Sarah Ann Johnson

On what drives her to write

“I write for the same reasons other people dance or paint, I suppose. Any art is an intensifier of experience, an exploration of experience itself. The recruiting of one’s faculties in order to do something so difficult and, in the ordinary sense, unnecessary, is really  very interesting, in part because so human. I feel that I am in the world in a particularly interesting way when I am writing, or doing anything that makes that kind of demand.

Of course there are things I wish to express, but it is truer to say that I find or understand them in the course of writing than it is to say that the writing simply serves as a way to express them”

On the power of metaphor?

“I share the Emersonian view that language is metaphorical in its origins and its fundamental character. The fossil poetry of single words is generally lost to familiarity, and we forget the potency of syntax, its amazing ability to capture meaning. Extended metaphors have syntax at a larger scale, and they exploit the fact that the mind moves through the likenesses in things.”

On what she admires about Melville, Faulkner, and the Old Testament

“Melville and Faulkner both write from a love of the splendors of consciousness, of the largest life of consciousness, including such things as knowledge and speculation, never to the exclusion—instead the enhancement—of immediate experience . . .  .  They explore conceptions of reality that are vast, generous, open and as ambitious as any metaphysics. The demands they make on language and the possibilities they open for it—these are the things that yield great prose. And, in the case of the Old Testament, great poetry.

The Old Testament is an entire, complex literature, which developed over a thousand years—a conservative estimate. It is dedicated to the proposition that human life and human history have very high meaning . . . and to the proposition that the cataclysmic world and obstreperous humankind are essentially holy and good. So it is a very this-worldly text in which metaphysical attention is brought to bear on sunlight and childbearing and warfare and greed and love and despair.

All its great beauty is earned by the directness with which it confronts , and laments and celebrates the world as it is .  .  .  . The beauty of the literature is the character of its engagement, the lyrical or pained or astonished—but always imperfect—perception of the holy.”

On the sacred and secular

“I don’t really accept the distinction between sacred and secular. . . . Nothing is without meaning, [everything] has its truest meaning under the aspect of eternity. The fact that we have no name for the  sacredness of most ordinary things does not by any  means put them in a searate category.”

Advice for new or aspiring writers

“Write the book you want to read. Never calculate or condescend. Keep your eyes open. Listen for the music of the language. Enrich you own sense of things and then be loyal to it.”

 

Speaking of Erotica . . .

Tags

books, Erotic Romance, Erotica, literature, Reading, Romance, Seeking the Beloved, sexual tension, Union with the Other

. . . have you read anything hot lately?

Perhaps it was the convergence of Valentine’s Day and the release of Fifty Shades of Gray (the movie), but I’ve been on the look-out for a really hot romance. Something literary. Not the so-called mommy-porn “Gray” aspires to. Nor the BDSM that seems so popular these days. But a straight, steamy love story that has depth and substance. I have yet to find what I’m seeking.

It hasn’t been from lack of trying though. I read “Gray” back when it first came out just to see what the hoopla was all about. But I couldn’t get past the first three chapters–the writing was so silly, the characters so unbelievable, and even the sexual tension between the two seemed tepid at best. Nothing to keep me turning pages.

Since then I’ve revisited some “steamy” romances I read in my youth, only to find them sadly lacking. I’ve surfed through pages of reviews of erotic romance and downloaded a few e-books onto my Kindle (thank God for Kindle—this is what it was created for!). While some were fun reads, and others hot enough to steam up my reading glasses, all left me feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

I am seeking something that stimulates and satisfies in a deeper way than what I’ve found so far. A story that explores, perhaps, at least to some degree, both the sensual and spiritual nature of desire, arousal, and consummation. After all, sexual and spiritual pleasure, power and transformation are parallel journeys on the road to fulfillment. Both are precipitated by strong human desires for union with the Other. Both, arguably, are what shape us as human beings.

Each journey involves deep longing for something beyond the individual self. Each requires trust and receptivity, surrender and self-sacrifice, tenderness and devotion. Each gives way to passion and delight, awe and wonder, ecstasy and bliss, love and transcendence.

Each seeks the Beloved.

I can’t help thinking that the first journey, that’s seeded in sexual desire for oneness, is what prepares us for the second, to step outside ourselves into something that subsumes us. And I can’t help believing that the two journeys can overlap or coincide. That the parallels between them have deep significance.

Maybe this kind of recognition is too much to ask for in an erotic romance. But I’m still looking.

How about you? Do you enjoy reading hot romances? Anything you’d recommend?

20 Favorite and Most Influential Books

Tags

authors, books, favorite authors, favorite books, influential books, literary fiction, literature, non-fiction, novels, Philosophy, spirituality

What follows are the 20 favorite books that helped shape the way I think and write. It was hard to limit the list to twenty, and the only way I could do so was by including only one book per author, and by excluding works of poetry, and two foundational (religious) books, all of which I may write about in future posts.

But the twenty remaining are significant. I’ve listed them–more or less–by when they first appeared in my life, starting with fiction and moving to non-fiction: memoir, science, and philosophy.

1. Fairy Tales, by Charles Peuralt and the Grimms Brothers – I grew up on fairy tales and came to love these stories, which speak in deeply moving ways of what it means to be human. Not surprisingly these stories seemed to rise in slightly different forms all over the world. They illustrate the archtypes that Carl Jung writes about and point toward a collective human consciousness. A few of my favorites were Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and The Snow Queen. As an adult, my love of fairy tales is satisfied by such books as The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (a darkly sensual retelling of the old fairy tales) and more recently The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (a retelling of that classic fairy tale, as experienced by homesteaders in 1920 Alaska.)
2. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madelien L’Engle – As a child, this classic was my all-time favorite. It introduced me to the genres of science fiction and fantasy, and inspired me with the subtle elements of spirituality woven throughout. It also spurred my interest in physics and astronomy, and how all these things can be drawn together and brought to life with lively characters and a riveting plot.
3. Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien – This trilogy by a master story-telling creates a fantastical world that has the gravitas of myth and lore. Humble, flawed, impulsive, and heroic characters are set upon a rousing adventure full of pitfalls and setbacks, in their quest to overcome evil and save the world. It both delighted me as a reader and instructed me as a writer. I haven’t read anything quite like it until recently, reading the Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin. This series doesn’t measure up to the Lord of the Rings as literary fiction, but it does surpass it in terms of gritty reality, sexual exploitations, and characters with fatal flaws–literally.
4. The Bear, by William Faulkner – This is one of several linked stories in Faulkner’s book Go Down, Moses. It’s one of his most spiritual stories and the one most anthologized, about a boy coming of age in the wilderness and his hunt for the legendary and mythical Bear. I found how Faulkner depicts nature as a powerful, mystical force mesmerizing, as I did the structure of his sentences. I love how his long, sensuous, prose that wraps around itself, and takes you, phrase by phrase, to a deeper and more profound meaning. Reading Faulkner trained my ear for other seductive writing styles and stories, such as those by Toni Morrison and Gabriel Marquez.
5. The Beast in the Jungle, by William James – This is another short story, a novella actually, that deeply impacted my taste in literature, for writing that is dense and complex. I found the way he deeply probes the human consciousness and shifting perceptions using an unreliable narrator fascinating. His writing was a major influence in the works of the next writer on this list, Virgina Woolf.
6. To a Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf – I love her lyrical prose, the way she uses stream of consciousness to move the narrative, and the fact that so much can be revealed so quietly and subtly when writing about an ordinary day, ordinary lives. I agree with Eudora Welty when she wrote how this book is “beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.”
7. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison – I was blown away by this novel, the beauty and lyricism of the prose, the intensely passionate and quirky charactors, and the magical realism that is woven throughout. I also loved her novels Beloved and Tar Baby. More than any other writer, I think the depth and beauty of her prose is what I aspire to. Reading her books led me to the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, his short works as well as One Hundred Years of Solitude, which easily could have been included as one of my top 20’s.
8. Bellefleur, by Joyce Carol Oates – I had read many of Oates’ dark, often violent short stories with a strong psychological bent. And I know these influenced me – some of my short stories are dark and deeply psychological. But I found Bellefleur, which is written in a completely different style, spellbinding. Here she marries gothic romance with magical realism, and it’s so over the top, and written with such rich and luscious prose, such depth and sensuality, that it is a delight to read.
9. Passion and Other Stories, by Isaac Bashevis Singer – I fell in love with these stories set in Eastern Europe about Yiddish-speaking Jews. While rooted in realism, these stories of unique characters and situations have subtle elements of magical realism and an undertone of spirituality. While not well-known today, Singer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978.
10. War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy – For all of its length and complexity, this novel is easy reading because it sweeps you away with the mastery of great story-telling. Reading Tolstoy, I feel I am sitting at the knees of a master writer and drinking up all I can learn.
11. Notes From Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky – Another book I was blown away by, but in an entirely different way than the others. I’d never met a character or heard a voice like the narrator of his tale, who displays a kind manic, depraved perversity and woundedness. Doestoevsky intimately and devastatingly dissects the inner life of a man on the verge of madness. He reveals that kind of humiliation and masochistic tendency that haunts our worst nightmares.
12. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller – This fascinating novel is based on Miller’s own experiences living in Paris in the late 20’s. It’s about an artist seeking to live a rich and authentic life under dire conditions. This narrator, like Doestoevshy’s, writes about the humiliations he suffers and his own woundedness, but unlike the other character, he rises above it—he yearns for transcendence. This novel reads in part like a memoir with sketches of important writers and artists living in Paris at that time, and also contains long sections of stream-of-consciousness with poignant, luminous passages. When it was published in 1934 it was banned in the US for its erotica. When finally published here in the 1961, it sparked a controversy that ended in a Supreme Court ruling that extended free speech to include literature.
13. At Play in the Field of the Lord, and The Snow Leopard, both by Peter Mathiessen – I couldn’t decide which book to include, both were so influential. I read At Play first, a novel set in South America about two degenerate pilots, two missionary families, and a tribe of natives on the verge of extinction. The second is a memoir about Mathiessen climbing the Himalayas in search of the elusive snow leopard. It’s also a meditation on the death of his late wife, and about his pracice of Zen Buddhism. Both books are great adventure stories that look deeply into the meaning of life, the natural world, and the human heart.
14. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig – This was an immensely popular “culture-bearing” classic from the seventies. It had been rejected 122 times before finally finding its way into print, and immediately became a best seller. And for good reason. Like “The Snow Leopard,” it is part memoir –a father-son road trip, part meditation on the meaning of life (the author calls it “an inquirey into values”), and part instruction manual on how to practice Zen through the art of motocycle maintenance. A heavy and heady road-trip indeed.
15. Cosmos, By Carl Sagan – Another heady and heavy road-trip—through the Cosmos this time. His series inspired a keen interest in astronomy and cosmology, and enabled me to see how science, too, can help us explore the big questions about what it means to be human.
16. The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas – Where Sagan was exploring the outer universe, Thomas explores the universe of earth, which he compares in all its complexity to the beauty of a single cell. Writing as a biologist, his essays ramble from field to field, with meditations on such diverse topics as music, death, language, medicine, insects, and computers. Each essay always brings into juxtaposition seemingly dissimilar items, revealing surprising relationships and shedding light on the human condition and the nature of reality.
17. The Tao of Physics, by Fritjof Capra – The book copy describes this as “a pioneering book” that “reconciles eastern philosophy and western science in a brilliant humanistic vision of the universe.” An apt description. This book took me on another adventurous road-trip, this time into the tiniest realms of the universe. It awakened in me a keen interest in quantum physics and the latest discoveries of science, which I’ve been exploring (as a layman) ever since. James Gleick’s Chaos: Making of a new Science, M. Mitchell’s Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, and Leonard Shains’s more cross-disciplinary Art & Science: Parallel vison in Space, Time & Light are a few examples of influential books that followed.
18. The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran – I read this as a teen, and it began a life-long interest in philosophy, eastern spiritual practices, and the possibility of creating an artful life. It was written by a Lebanese artist and philosopher as 26 prose poems, each a meditation on such topics as joy and sorrow, good and evil, beauty, pleasure, marriage, children, and so much more.
19. An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuki, Forward by Carl Jung – This book introduced me to two great thinkers, Suzuki and Jung, and a new way of thinking. It was hugely influential. Suzuki was born in Japan and trained as a Buddhist disciple at a Zen Monestary. He wrote extensively on Zen and was credited with bringing Zen to the West. I went on to eagerly read (and study) several more of his works, including his Essays in Zen Buddhism. I’ve never read another book on Zen that comes close to his works in depth and clarity. Another favorite, however, is Alan Watt’s The Spirit of Zen. The foreword to Suzuki’s book also led me to read Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, and Bill Moyers’ interviews with Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth. Both hugely influential.
20. Creativity and Tao: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art, and Poetry, by Chang Chung-yuan – I ran across this in a used book store when I was a young woman. I read it to tatters along with several other copies I bought to replace it—that’s how much I love this book, and how often I study and meditate upon it. It’s the kind of book you can read over and over and gain new inspiration and understanding with each reading. It sparked a keen and enduring love of art, and threw new light on the creative process–where it comes from and how it is manifested in art and the written word. It deftly weaves together and brings to a profound point some of the great loves of my life: Poetry, Art, Philosophy, and Spirituality.

Have you read any of these books?  I’d be really interested in hearing your comments on them. I’d also love to hear what books influenced you the most.