My List

In some ways the last book I read is the one that influences me the most. That is, it influences my thinking, what I am thinking about at the time. Recently I read The Baader Meinhof Complex, by the German author Stefan Aust. That set me thinking again about the role of the individual in society and my own position as a subject in society and how one makes oneself into one's own subject. I've also nearly finished Peter Ackroyd's big biography of Charles Dickens. That book makes me think about the nature of the artist - that artist- and the contribution he made to the world of literature. What a man he was! And what a writer! It also has me think about the nature of biography as a form of writing, something Ackroyd specifically discusses in the book.

But when I think about the list of those books that have most influenced me I'm thinking of books that form the bedrock of my ideas. Books that shaped my world view and formed my taste for other books.

My list starts with The Bible. This is one of the first books I was introduced to when I went to Sunday School as a little kid. I particularly remember falling in love with a picture in the Bible which was the picture of Moses in the Bullrushes (see Exodus Chapter 2). As an adopted child I was undoubtedly predisposed to the image of a child being found by a protective person and it drew me into the idea of books as a place of refuge and comfort. I also loved fairy tales and comics as a young child. On Saturdays my dad took me to the Victoria Market where he bought me a few comics each week. I always chose the Classic comics which told the great european classic stories in words and pictures. These texts shaped my love of literature. My reading of the Bible persists. I'm always having to look it up to understand or write a poem and I have made a habit of reading the New Testament during Lent.

I first read War and Peace by the Russian, Leo Tolstoy, in my late teens. That book showed me how ambitious a novel could be and affirmed my idea that all beings were equally important in this world. It encouraged me to keep on questioning all statements about great men; great anything. Tolstoy makes plain the inter-dependence of all people. I read it again in a new translation last year and was astonished by its genius.

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger showed me a funny, cheeky, voice in the world. I love all Salinger's books.

Monkey Grip by Helen Garner was the first book I read in the moment when I appreciated the full impact of the time and place in which it was written. I was working in a bookshop when the novel was published. It was eagerly awaited. I bought two copies and P and I sat on our front verandah for couple of days in beautiful summer heat, reading the novel side by side. Here was a voice from our generation, speaking the streets of Melbourne. That book set my temperature for finding out the books of my time in my own place.

T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets is another book I associate with reading with my loved ones. P and I went camping with our little girls on Mt. Kosciuszko one Easter. As we sat around the campfire the ABC radio broadcast a reading of Eliot's great poem. I treasure the memory of that time: the frosty air, the clear sky, the darlings, and Eliot's poetry:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.


These are books that have influenced me.

I invite others to give me their list.