Total Number of Ratings: 6
The Pen is Mightier; Life-Changing Reads
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 10:33 PM
There is, without a doubt, great power in the written word.
In a broad sense, there are scores of books that have helped to chart the course of human history in a very real way. Be it the Bible or Mein Kampf, The Art of War or The Republic, books have shaped society for centuries. Books, pamphlets and plays have sparked revolutions, toppled empires and challenged the way we look at the world as a people. Old Billy Shakespeare wasn't kidding around when he wrote that "many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills."
The inspiration for this article wasn't these Revolutionary-with-a-capital-R books, important as they are. No, lately I've been thinking more about the power a book has to change a person's life. Any great piece of art - film, music, painting - has the potential to profoundly impact the consumer. However, in my personal experience, no media strikes me as strongly or as deeply as a book. A well-written or particularly thought-provoking book can stick with me not for hours or day, but for years. One of the exciting things about picking up a highly-recommended book is I never know if it will end up as a major touchstone for me. I'm not confident that I can name a movie or album that changed the way I approach the world, but there are certainly books that have transformed me in subtle and obvious ways. 
Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, for example, is a book that has had a profound impact on me. While I usually list it as my favorite book, I can't put a finger on exactly how it changed me. I don't blame it for a shift in world view, or for causing me to treat people differently. I'm not pulling up all my roots to go to New York, nor am I any more inspired to write comics. Yet I know that it had a very real affect on me. I suppose the best way to describe it is as a book that changed the way I look at literature. When I read now and when I think about what I've read before, there's a clear split between BK (before Kavalier) and AC (after Clay). Kavalier and Clay was and remains one of, if not the, best-written books I've read. The masterful plotting, beautiful writing and fully realized themes and characters created a benchmark that I use to judge all the other fiction I read. The book also opened my eyes to "literary" fiction, a genre that I still approach with some apprehension but used to eschew completely. It's not an overstatement to say that Chabon's opus changed the way I experience writing.
Despite Malcolm Gladwell's detractors, The Tipping Point is another book that I'd consider life-changing. The first long-form work by the author, the book puts forth the idea of "tipping points" as moments of change in society, points when "the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable." Gladwell deftly explains the agents of these changes, as well as the content and contexts that propel these epidemic ebbs and flows. The book provides plenty of real world examples, and makes a convincing case that tipping points can explain everything from fashion fads to shifts in crime rates. Ever since reading the book, there's been a paradigm shift in my thinking and everything is a possible tipping point. Although my college experience gave me many lenses through which to look at sociological changes, this book provided the filter I go to first.
As I think about all the classics I read in middle school and high school, the influential books come fast and furious. There were quite a few I didn't enjoy while I was reading them, but looking back they were seriously important to me. 1984 changed the way I look at war, government and the media. One of the major reasons I studied politics and law was To Kill a Mockingbird, and Eichmann and the Holocaust changed the way I look at law and personal responsibility. One of my favorite plays to this day is Death of a Salesman, and I think of it often when I'm thinking about technology, career and adulthood. With some time and perspective, I can see why these books are such revered classics.
What say you, Murmur-ites? What books have absolutely changed your lives in ways major and minor? Any of the books I listed just not do it for you? Let loose in the comments.
Even though I was an English major for a few semesters in college, I never really liked reading. But the summer I was interning in Philly I decided, on a lark, to try reading (and finishing) Gone with the Wind. And that's when I fell in love with reading. As iconic as the movie is, it's all about the love affair between Scarlett and Rhett. The book is, in my opinion anyway, an amazing story of survival and doing what needs to be done.
I also have to mention "The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure" by William Goldwin. It's my favorite book for reasons that are listed right there in the title.
And I know this is meant for prose, but I also have to acknowledge Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead and Powers by Brian Michaell Bendis. They were the first comics I read and are resposible for sparking my passion for comics.
this is a great article and it nudges right up against a blog post caroline did this past week about what stories speak to you, so the obvious answer for me is still on the tip of my tongue.
the vampire lestat (anne rice's second vampire novel) showed up for me at the exact right time. at 14, i was on the edge of a life-changing crisis of faith and wasn't quite able to articulate exactly what i was feeling, and more importantly, what i was afraid to admit i was feeling. lestat goes through a near identical crisis and his journey had a powerful impact on me.
this doesn't qualify as a "book", but in 4th grade, we did a unit on macbeth in my gifted class. i had always loved performing and losing myself in my own stories/make believe, but i think that was the moment that i understood that acting was a real thing, and more importantly a real thing that i wanted to be doing.
I also want to throw in one more book I just remembered - Lisa Pogrebin's "One and the Same", a book about twins that was released late this year. Reading the book was a cathartic experience that I haven't had from reading in years. It put into words feelings about being a twin, identity and brotherhood that I've felt my entire life but never been able to express. Best book I read this year.
Man, I just read 'Outliers' and it's pretty much impossible for me not to start applying Gladwell's type of analysis to everything I can think about. I think it's good to ask some questions about it, but anybody who gets people thinking in a new, different, useful way so effectively is doing something right.
Overall, I think my relationship with books that are important to me is a lot like what you described about the classics you remember from school. I didn't necessarily know when I was reading them what effect they'd have. Though there are a couple I can think of: "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham -- it made me think about the way people relate to each other, and the stories that we value, in a new way (appropriately enough, it's about how three generations of people relate to a specific book, "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf; that's also a book I love but it didn't hit me at the right time the way "The Hours" did). Another is "Confederates in the Attic," a nonfiction book by Tony Horwitz. He went around the South learning about how people in the late 20th century felt about the Civil War; it's part history, part travel-writing, and part straight-up reporting, and a great example of all of these.
I'm SURE I have more.
I also agree with the Kav and Clay.
Not really sure if I can say one book that changed me in any real way. Some have inspired me. Will Christopher Baer's Phineas Poe trilogy really got my creative juices flowing and caused me to start writing.
Other books (and graphic novels that might fit that profile) would be Cocaine Nights (JG Ballard), any Philip K. Dick, BKV's The Ecaspists and Pride of Baghdad. More recently, Jonathan Hickman's The Nightly News.
Excellent topic. I have the same sort of relationship with Kavalier and Clay. It really is a benchmark.
Another is the Roald Dahl Omnibus, an enormous collection of the author's short fiction. That was when I realized what could be done with voice.
More recently, Charlie Huston's crime fiction sold me on that genre. I love the rhythm. I love how unencumbered the prose is.
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The Iluminatus Trilogy. But I doubt 99% of people can understand or handle the ideas within it.