Instant canon gonna get you

[giantsloth]

Chris Nakashima-Brown posted a list of books that changed his life and tagged me to do the same. I tried to stick mostly with books I read prior to meeting Kessel and falling into the deep end of the sf pool. (Thus there are no women writers in this list, and there are problematic individuals such as Hunter Thompson, which sucks but so it goes.) So, submitted without much comment:

1. Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones.
2. Donald Barthelme, City Life.
3. Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur.
4. A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner.
5. Franz Kafka, The Penal Colony.
6. Damon Knight, editor, the Orbit anthologies.
7. Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
8. Frank Miller and Bill Sienciewicz, Elektra: Assassin.
9. Barney Rosset, editor, The Evergreen Review Reader.

Comments

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

I'll see your Milne and raise you a Beatrix Potter.

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

Seuss missed this list by one thin cat-in-the-hat hair.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stranger_here/]

You too with Elektra: Assassin?

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

Yeah--and I cheated a bit, because that was from after when I'd been Kesselized--that was a lot more important to me than the others in that crop of mid-80s "comix grow up" stuff.

[ted chiang (from livejournal.com)]

Can you say more about how reading Elektra: Assassin changed your life?

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

Um, it made me realize the exciting possibilities of stylishly violent revenge through mystical mind control? Maybe it's more just "I liked it a lot" rather than "it changed my life." But I do think it was doing really interesting stuff in the guise of an adventure story. Art (actual capital A Art) and text working together, using the visual and textual rhythms to make it make sense ("sense"), non-obvious political resonances.

[ted chiang (from livejournal.com)]

Okay, thanks. For me, I'd probably say The Dark Knight Returns; it's not as sophisticated a work as Elektra: Assassin, but it was pretty much the first comic book that I read (I hadn't paid much attention to them when I was a kid), and it caused me to seek out others.

[chrismclaren.livejournal.com]

Whatever happened to that Frank Miller?

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

Good question. I think things went south pretty quickly. Elektra Lives Again was craptacular.

Nice!

[(Anonymous)]

I was too chicken to dive into the comics vault, fearing it would end up with something involving Matter-Eater Lad. And yes, I should have included Fear and Loathing, too.

C-Nak

Re: Nice!

[giantsloth.livejournal.com]

No Matter Eater Lad for me in comix form, but it is a pretty groovy Guided by Voices song.