As a younger man, I studied art in Munich and London. I’ve always felt that I learnt a more serious hands-on approach in Munich, but one thing still resonates with me, from my days as a student in England. We were gathered, a louche and motley group of art students, to listen to a visiting lecturer on contemporary literature. He came in, this big burly fellow with a bushy ginger beard. We thought he looked like a character actor of the time; James Robertson-Justice, we told each other, snidely.
Perhaps the lecturer thought so as well, as he had the commanding presence and booming bass voice to complete the resemblance. Looking us over with an imperious eye, he launched straight into us.
‘Art students,’ he boomed,’ mostly people too lazy to read’. We were all silent, so he went on: ‘That got your attention, now I will prove my point. He put up on a black-board the titles and authors of maybe twenty books. ‘now I want you all to write down – you can all write, I hope – which of these you have read. – He glowered about – ‘I will test you on it.’
As a life-long avid reader, I was a little chagrined – only about ten or so of these books had I actually read. As it turned out, I had actually read more than most. This evinced from him some surprise – as an Australian he said, that I could read at all was commendable.
-What a prick - Got a laugh from the others, tho
As he went into his main thesis, he quickly won us all. He pointed out that to be artists, we needed to know not only about Van Gogh, for example, but to understand his historic/cultural context. To begin to understand our own century, the reasons for the cultural changes at the turn of the century, we must read such writers as Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx etc. Not to have read Kafka, or Joyce, made it difficult to understand where one might begin, as a twentieth century visual artist. Those embittered poets writing after WW1, led to the Dada art movement.
Without Freud, there would not have been a surrealist movement. Without Kafka, hard to imagine Expressionism. The point being driven home by our lecturer: all art is self-referential; to be valid, it must somehow hold up a mirror to contemporary life and culture.
The visual arts cannot live in some cultural vacuum.
At the end of the lecture, he received a standing ovation; I for one have never forgotten
his advice. Read, read, read – with the caveat; there is a plethora of worthless books printed. I think most of us indulge in reading - and enjoying – bodice-ripping romances, tales of adventure and derring-do, depending on one’s taste. But one should always be aware; this is pulp fiction, not Literature.
Most avid readers begin very early, and I was no exception. It helped that my parents were both readers. I and my five siblings devoured every book that came into the house.
One of my first loves, Jules Verne’s ‘Journey to the centre of the Earth’ I received one Christmas. Hiding myself away, I read it by lunch time. R.L. Stevenson’s, ‘Treasure Island,’ Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘White company’ – and of course later on, all of his Holmes stories. In admiration, I once wrote ‘The making of a Man’ A Holmesian pastiche, published by MX Publishing. Then there’s all of Dickens, Mark Twain, etc. Etc.
Of course one’s taste in reading changes, matures, but these and many other great books from my early years, I still love them – hey, and Lorna Doone!
From my art school lecturer I owe Kafka’s ‘The trial’, ‘The Castle, plus short stories, and Joyce. His ‘Ulysses’ is a towering mountain of a book; it is daunting, but to persevere…
And of course his whole ouvre. Without Joyce, we would probably not have Becket, nor Henry Miller. Nor perhaps one of my all-time favourites, Thomas Pinchon’s ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, or ‘V’. Nor yet ‘Fear and loathing in Las Vegas’ by Hunter S. Thompson. As that long-ago art school lecture said, all creative endeavour is self referential – to create, we must stand on the shoulders of Giants.
I have in my enthusiasm galloped ahead: as a young man I worked with a very interesting and deeply read Russian -He introduced me to the wonderland, the vast scope, of that language’s literature. War and Peace, Dr. Zhivago, Quiet flows the Don – the canon is an immense sea - I firmly believe one cannot call oneself literate without at least dipping a toe into it.
The literature coming out of the dreadful experiences of the first world war is a large and sombre one. To choose but several, is difficult, but if we take Robert Graves ‘Goodbye to all That’, and then read Erich Remarque – ‘All quiet on the Western Front’, these two, from opposing sides, gives as comprehensive view of this awful war as possible.
‘The Good Soldier Zweik, from the Czech writer Jaroslav Hasek, found some humour amongst horrors of war.
In the between-wars time, perhaps John Steinbeck was the pre-eminent novelist; If nothing else, read ‘ The Grapes of Wrath.’ OK, Hemmingway, but not perhaps my favourite. From the British writers, ‘DH Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterly’s Lover was something of a bombshell. I am of course writing all this off the top of my head, and so it is not by any means a comprehensive, or even time-line base list.
Not all of my favourite books were necessarily Anglophone. Simone de Beauvoir, wrote several very influential books – my favourite, ‘The Mandarins’. Also from France, Albert Camus wrote among other books, ‘The Plague’. ‘Di Lampadusa, from Sicily, ‘The Leopard’, also that marvellous book of German writer Guenter Grass, ‘The Tin Drum’.
From an Australian point of view, that poignant book from Bert Facey, ‘A Fortunate Life’, Deals not only his war-time service, but a whole adventurous life. This book has a singular ‘voice’; it is revealed that Facey didn’t actually learn to read and write until he was adult, and the writing has a careful, deep honesty which is very compelling.
Another Australian novel, by Thomas Keneally , ‘Schindler’s List’ deals more with the secondary repercussions of the monstrous Third Reich than the war it brought down upon the world.
Also from Australia, the very well researched history of early Australia, ‘The Battle of Vinegar Hill’ by Lynette Silver actually influenced me to begin my own series of three loosely connected historical novels dealing with the theme, the beginnings of Australian National Consciousness. ‘Brendan Kinneen’, ‘Trog the Leprechaun’, and Oliver Banfield.’
During the sixties, there were a number of cult writers, among them J.D. Salinger – ‘Catcher in the Rye’. Jack Kerouac also very influential. Personally I was greatly influenced by a series of books by Carlos Casteneda. Although written in the 1930’s. Hermann Hesse’s book ‘Narcissus and Goldmund’ only achieved cult status after WW2 in the English speaking world.
Fifty years later, most of these works seem to have sunk without trace. I think that really great literature, never really goes out of fashion. All of those that I just mentioned, were well written, entertaining, but ultimately strictly zeitgeist. Of that time, perhaps Kurt Vonnegut lives on, ‘Slaughter-house five’ yes, but my enduring favourite, his first novel, ‘ The Piano Player’.
Sometimes one finds oneself reading stuff which didn’t at first attract. For instance, Philip Jose Farmer’s ‘Riverworld ‘series is a must, a marvellous creation.
I also found ‘The Shipping News’ by Annie Proulx strangely compelling. I say strangely, because I cannot lay my finger on what it is that gripped me. When I think on it, perhaps the connecting thread is that like all the books I admire, all are written with complete honesty.
Great books can sometimes be badly written – Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Gulag Archipelago ‘ comes to mind – and yet still ring with truth. The writing seemed to me somehow clumsy, but the repercussions of this dramatic bomb-shell of a book helped to bring down the Soviet Union. Compare this with something like Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code.’ Well written, extremely well promoted, enormously successful. Nevertheless, a complete lot of worthless drivel. But hey, Danny boy was laughing all the way to the bank.
Some random choices; Erika Jong’s ‘Fear of Flying’. What a hoot, talk about chutzpa. ‘The Ginger Man ‘ by JP Dunleavy, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ by Hunter S. Thompson, for the same reason. Great books don’t necessarily seem to have great themes, but nevertheless often reveal great truths.
In latter years, I have greatly admired Ishigoro’s ‘The Remains of the Day’; since the Pole Josef Conrad no foreigner has so captured the nuance of English dialogue, and mores.
Laurence Durrell of course, for his whole output. But in particular ‘The Alexandrian Quartet’. And an unusual book – the astonishing account by the Polish writer Slavomir Ravicz, ‘The long Walk’. Acclaimed as a true account, this has since been challenged. I would only quote to those who called it a hoax; the words of PT Barnum: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’.
Another marvellous account – truth can be found in fiction, my friend
Comments