You read Prof. Jackson’s post, right? About the world ending this weekend?
I always pay lots of attention when my colleagues at Brainstorm tell me stuff. Well, some of them, anyway. Let’s just say that, as a smart person, I pay lots of attention to Jackson and, as a Recovering Catholic, I pay lots of attention to threats of an apocalyptic nature.
My immediate response, as you might imagine, was to pitch a story to Another Publication about what books we should all read—and which ones we should avoid—if indeed the world is going to end on Saturday.
I asked a few friends and posted a request for suggestions on Facebook. The answers have been fascinating—and they have, even more impressively perhaps—been legion.
The trouble, of course, is that I can’t really use the serious and thoughtful responses my friends have provided, but I am fascinating by them and want more. I was trawling for silly and frivolous but pulled up smart and weighty. I am in better company than I realized.
And this reminded me about how generous you were, readers, when I asked about Femmes Fatale a while back. So let me toss this one out to you: What books are you reading before the earth is consumed in a fireball and which ones are you skipping?
Feel free to be frivolous, in which case I might quote you, or earnest, in which case you’re in excellent company.
To give you a sense of the company you’re in, I’ll offer a few examples below, with thanks to their writers:
PB: MUST read ANNA KARENINA and WAR AND PEACE; one cannot die without reading these books. One must not read anything by Tama Janowitz; the guy who wrote the 80′s hit, oh god, you know who I mean, HUGE success with his first novel about being drugged out and he eats bread at the end? JAY MACINERNY…I forget the name of his book; THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA (because we all have bad bosses but why die thinking that one person got rich by complaining about it?); DAWN HAS A BAD DAY (Part of a series of books that ruins the hearts and minds of young girls); WHEN NIETZSCHE WEPT (yes, there’s something with that title, I know I misspelled his name, or any books written by professors who think being smart is all that’s required to write a novel); THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, because it’s not enough to be a librarian and shelve books–it doesn’t qualify you to WRITE them; THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS (might be worth burning as a last act of morality; THE READER (or anything by Bernhard Schlink or any other holocaust pornography.
Hanley:Omensetter’s Luck, by William H. Gass. As a reflection on how, to find the good and sort out the evil in ourselves, we have been tasked on a daily basis with the equivalent of untangling the knots in a staggering pile of muddy wires, the novel succeeds. It is not all doom and gloom, though. It is the most cathartic reading experience I have ever had. You wallow through most of its pages feeling a sick empathy for its characters–and often hatred–but by the end you feel sort of glad to be human. It is the only book I have ever read which showed me that being human is a curse and an achievement, and in its difficulty (it is not an easy read) reminds us that life itself, whoever you are, has been difficult for all of us. But it should only be read, given the world is ending, by those who are ready and willing to face their deaths head on. Stay away from Don DeLillo. He is one of my favorites, but his books deal strictly with a moving world and the puzzling way it stretches itself forward. Philosophy, too. It’s a little late in the game to catch up on all that Foucault. Also, skip Beckett, despite the real humanity beneath his writing, because it might just depress the hell out of you before the world ends. For fun, any early Stephen King novel will do. His short story collection, NIGHT SHIFT, is also excellent. Any of these books will provide at least the comfort in knowing that there are worse fates than simply dying. (After all: “Sometimes dead is better.”) And for a bolster of courage, we should all re-read “Death Be Not Proud” to remind ourselves that Death is not the Big Deal he thinks he is: he is simply an errand boy, taking us (according to Donne) somewhere nicer, and so should be feared no more than a limo driver. I can imagine him wearing a similarly tacky suit.
One Of Our Own: MUST READ: 1. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. (Seriously, a fabulous read, but if the apocalypse is coming, it’ll make you long for it…it’s the “other” side of India India–vividly described squalor, a dog-eat-dog India where you want the human race to just plain end) 2. Pride and Prejudice: What’s the point in reading it now if you haven’t already read it? Pemberley will be obliterated. Still, if you love books and especially if you’re a woman, the time has come. 3. Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky. Unbelievable book, great way to spend the final days oblivious to what’s going on around you. 4. On a serious note, Marcus Aurelius Meditations. It’s short. You can read it a couple of times through before the End. You’ll get the point real fast that you’re nothing but a speck of dust, gone in an instant; apocalypse or not, there’s no point in fretting, just be a nice fellow to your friends and family and go happily. AS FOR THE MUST NOT READ: 1. Steve Martin’s An Object of Beauty. Steve Martin has written great comic pieces in The New Yorker, and Shopgirl was good. But here he tries to get inside a young woman who’s climbing her way up in the gallery biz (a Mary Boone type maybe) and it’s so far off base you cringe with embarrassment–especially in the sex scenes, where Martin seems to think women like to not wear underpants so they can lift their skirts and watch men drool. 2. Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It’s way too long. You won’t have time to do anything else.
As for me, I’m keeping it light. I just figure diet books and investment manuals won’t be selling well.
Your thoughts, dear readers?
(Brainstorm illustration derived from images by Flickr users edenpictures, Tattoo_Lover, and Dave Hogg.)
