The Secret Sharer

The Birth of Pretension

This time I’d like to do a departure from what I normally do which is to blab on and on about literature, philosophy, and religion. Well, I have to admit that I wasn’t always this pretentious and would like to recall the days when I was more engaged with the culture around me. So in this blog I’d like to list 10 or sources that got me on this road to being so obsessed about literature and the arts. These are in no particular order and are by no means listed in order of importance:

-- Charles Bukowski: I read all of his books that I could get a hold of in high school. He made it cool to like Shakespeare, read biographies of composers, listen to classical music and still be a tough guy. His poetry goes from profane to beautiful and his prose is always readable and entertaining. My favourite book is Ham on Rye which is semi-autobiographical. For a sample of his poetry, go to www.dirttrailrunner.blogspot.com for a really good example. (This is done by my friend Jason and has a very good entry on Buk.) Every friend I had in high school who was male read Buk.

--Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground: He has to be one of my favourite songwriters of all time. On top of this, the Velvet Underground never sound dated. He’s the first person I ever heard whose songs seemed like short stories told over music. Add to this the atmosphere of New York you get from the songs, and you can see why he is irresistible to me. Imagine hearing these lyrics at 15: ‘Stephanie says…/ that she wants to know,/ why she’s given half her life/ to people she hates now’.

--The Pixies: Another band that stands the test of time. Unless you listen to the music, it’s impossible to sense the potency of the band. Black Francis’s lyrics always have an edge and he has a knack for taking the roundabout to make a point. My favourite album is Doolittle.

--Transworld Skateboarding Magazine: I know, why are they here? Well, many of the authors that I discovered in high school were from names dropped in interviews with professional skateboarders. A brief sample of things I discovered from them: W. Somerset Maugham, Charles Bukowski, Beowulf, Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, Rabelais, The Crucible, Lao-tze and Camus. Just for props here’s some of the pros who turned me on to these things: Kris Markovich, Ben Schroeder, Mario Rubalcaba, Jim Thiebaud and Kien Lieu (Donger).

No One Gets Out of Here Alive: This biography of Jim Morrison got me started hunting down authors when I was around 14. Although Jim strikes me as not such a great poet anymore, he did read a lot good stuff as an adolescent. The authors of this book track down what he read as a kid and also expanded on the literary allusions he made in his songs. I’m sure I still have the author list somewhere. Here are some of the things I read because of Jim: William Blake, Sartre, Rimbaud and most importantly Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy.

Ok, running out of time. The other five will be in the next instalment. See you then.

‘She said money is like us and time,/ it lies but can’t stand up’. – Velvet Underground, ‘Pale Blue Eyes’

posted by moor-rambler @ 7:48 AM