Inspirational Reading

What literary efforts feed your spirit? The authors who inspire you, who seem plugged in to a whole other circuit than most of us.

Thomas Merton?

T.S. Eliot?

William Blake?

In my case it's got to be Annie Dillard. HOLY THE FIRM in particular but all of her works are infused with an Otherness I can't quite pin down.

Anyone else?

David Foster Wallace (anything), Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, obviously), and Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale spring to mind most readily.

The end of At Swim-Two-Birds also blows my mind every time I read it (from the description of Sweeny perched in the tree through the story of the 3-obsessed German). Oh, and the end of the Tractatus.

And sooo many more poems. Bly's translation of Rilke's poem "Moving Forward". Most Berryman. Prufrock used to do it for me, but now I like the "Fire Sermon" section of The Waste Land better (not to mention the end).

I could go on.

the work of John Cowper Powys.

Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and his At Swim-Two Birds, Kotzwinkle's The Fan Man and Longfellow's The Secret Magdalene, these fed my soul with great writing, cosmic humor, and a stream of meaning bubbling underneath each.

Bless you for mentioning THE FAN MAN, a book that contemporary readers should rediscover--it's unbelievably good, a true "cult" novel that's accessible to everyone and funny as hell.

Let's hear it for Horse Badortie...

poetry:
Laura Fargas, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, AR Ammons. Many more, but those four are there for consolation and inspiration.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Elaine Pagels' THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS.

And let me put in a plug for Thomas Cahill: THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS and HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION should be required reading for spiritual seekers and religious historians. Amazing stuff.

Juliette by DAF Sade
Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon
Infinite Jest by DFW
Earthly Powers by Burgess
Nazi Literature in the Americas by Bolano

I'm inspired when a writer follows his or her instinct and "goes there," exposing human ugliness, human frailties, and human stupidity in grandiose, beautiful language. Then again, I'm attracted to darker shores and the infinite varieties of human corruption and evil. It's easy to tell readers how good and noble and whatever humanity is. But that's like showing your grandma a Hummel figurine. It's too easy. When I read Juliette, I was like, "Wow! This still offends me. And it was written 200+ years ago." After Sept. 11th, Gitmo, and Dubya breathing, there were still books that could shock me from my self-satisfied liberal complacency.

I'd add Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire for his appreciation of a world without man.

World without man?

How about:

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/multimedia.html

A tad bit misanthropic.

I agree with everything Weisman says -- except that cockroaches will disappear. Never.

Oh I am so sorry, message 13 went in the wrong thread. Off to move it.

We need more celebrity novelists getting into fist fights. I miss the days of yore when Norman Mailer could heat-butt Gore Vidal before his 3-martini lunch and afternoon wife-stabbing. Because everything in the past is better than everything in the present.

Walden; and I'd second Leaves of Grass.