What a Fool Believes

So, so many of them do. Let’s go with the first few that pop in my head (which you could argue are the ones that stand out the most, but I’m the type of person who’ll forget a few in the face of this kind of question, so let’s not make that argument):

Don Delillo—White Noise: This is the late twentieth century. Right on target. With language alive and fascinating. A favorite writer, a favorite book.

James Joyce—A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Exactly what I needed at exactly the right time (18). Should be required reading for everyone around that age. Plus, the prose matures and gains complexity as the protagonist does. Simple, brilliant.

Donald Barthelme—Sixty Stories: Whoa. You can do that? Awesome. I can do this then.

Leo Tolstoy—Anna Karenina/Fyodor Dostoevsky—The Brothers Karamazov: The greatest novels I’ve ever read. I always want to describe them as effortless, but that’s not the right word. The plots, characters, structures, and prose are air-tight. To get that you need skill, hard work, effort. No, not “effortless”, they’re natural, they’re life.

Vladimir Nabokov—Lolita: I love a good unreliable narrator and Humbert is one of the best. You should not want to listen to this dirty old man tell a tale of his dirty old lust for a “nymphet”, but you do. You want to listen. You even, kind of, it’s ok, you can admit it, like him. That’s because Nabokov, despite the fact that he’s often a grandiloquent sonofabitch, wrote the hell out of this story.