At t.k. splake's blog (www.vertinpress.com ), he recently presented his "Doomsday Book List". That is, the books he would preserve at world's end if he could only carry one sturdy rucksack with him into whatever existence waited on the other side of Armageddon (or however you spell that). It's only a parlour game--sort of like Desert Island Discs for those with bleaker minds--but in the absence of anything approximating poetic inspiration today, I thought I would pilfer the idea and present my list to you.
The first draft I made of my Doomsday List featured a lot of books that made me look very clever. When I took those out and inserted books for which I have a deep and abiding love, the list--and possibly the impression it made--was significantly different. Now we have a kind of mental autobiography of yours truly, for what that is worth, containing my loftier ambitions AND my sentimental corners.
What would you take with you in your Doomsday rucksack?
I wonder if there are any books that make it onto everybody's list?
DOOMSDAY BOOK LIST
"Visions of Cody" ~ Jack Kerouac
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" ~ James Agee
"In Watermelon Sugar" ~ Richard Brautigan
"Desert Solitaire" ~ Edward Abbey
"The Second Novel" ~ Norbert Blei
"A Draft Of XXX Cantos" ~ Ezra Pound
"Memoirs Of A Buccaneer" ~ Louis Le Golif
"Me Again: The Uncollected Writings Of" ~ Stevie Smith
"Keep The Aspidistra Flying" ~ George Orwell
"Puttering About In A Small Land" ~ Philip K. Dick
"Pilgrims Of The Wild" ~ Grey Owl
"Children Of Albion" ~ ed. Michael Horovitz
"Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews" ~ Allen Ginsberg
5 comments:
I'm working on my list. :) I'd have to include Mailer's "The Fight".
"The Stranger" - Albert Camus
"The Fight" - Normal Mailer
"The Demon" - Hubert Selby
"The Hell" - Henri Barbusse
"You Can't Win" - Jack Black
"Hunger" - Knut Hamsun
"Neddy- Life & Crimes of Neddy Smith" - Neddy Smith
"Down & Out in Paris & London" - George Orwell
"Out Stealing Horses" - Per Peterson
"The Road" - Cormac McCarthy
Shit, man, I've only read half of those books!
I considered "The Fight" too. But if I'm gonna take anything Ali-related in my Doomsday rucksack it would have to be a solar-powered dvd player and a copy of "When We Were Kings".
Guess I'll take a bunch that I've not read yet.
- Ralph
Oh, I wouldn't. Imagine being left with no other people and a bunch of really bad books.
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