Jesus fucking Christ. Are you reading Atlas
Shrugged? Don’t you know it’ll turn you into an asshole for at
least two years? When you’re college-age and your parents are paying
for everything, you’re likely to be a big believer in people pulling
themselves up by their bootstraps. Ayn Rand appeals to your age group
for that reason, but the problem is, once you actually have to pay your
own way, bootstrap-pulling gets a whole fuck of a lot harder, and Rand
sounds more and more like a creepy Republican. If you’re over 25 and
you still think her books are great, you’re (a) white and (b) an
asshole.
But you probably already knew about Rand. After all, you chose to go
to college in Seattle, so odds are good that you’re not a racist
country clubber. But did you know that millions of people your age are
routinely turned into assholes by books? In fact, certain
books—more than music, film, or any other art form
combined—seem to trigger the genetic sequence for fucktardism in
9 out of 10 readers.
Everybody knows someone who’s taken the Charles Bukowski thing too
far. He read Ham on Rye and suddenly he’s boozing it up every
night, pecking out stories on his manual typewriter about people who
drink too much. Do your Bukowski friend a favor and give him a copy of
anything by John Fante. Fante was one of Bukowski’s heroes, and anyone
can tell that Bukowski’s best writing reads like an echo of Fante’s.
Start with Ask the Dust. Or maybe West of Rome, which
is one of the funniest modern American novellas ever. If you prefer
something from the 21st century, Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land is a
hilarious novel about a dropout that rings a hell of a lot truer than
the Henry Chinaski cycle.
On the Road‘s mystique escapes me: Any twatwaffle can take
a road trip and conclude that he’s the most important human being on
the face of the earth. Some of Jack Kerouac’s later writing, especially
Desolation Angels, is much more responsible, human, and
beautiful. And while Hunter S. Thompson is a great writer, people take
the wrong lessons from him, thinking that his books are advertisements
for pill popping and narcissism. Everyone should be forced to read one
Mike Royko book for every Thompson book they read. Royko’s folksy,
down-to-earth writing voice belies a rattlesnake’s understanding of how
politics—and human nature—really work.
Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, raises an important question: How
do you write a bad novel about a goddamned talking gorilla?
Answer: By making the talking gorilla spout some bullshit
consciousness-expansion hoo-ha that falls apart like a snotty tissue if
you think about it for half a second. Likewise, The Alchemist,
by Paulo Coelho, is a deep book for shallow people; it is a weak,
pointless novel disguised as a half-assed fable. If you want something
that’s fantastic in both senses of the word, try Fup by Jim
Dodge, which is as close to a perfect book as I can imagine, or just
about anything by Italo Calvino or Aimee Bender.
There’s a lot of chick lit that should be avoided, but the worst is
The Secret Life of Bees, a hideous novel about a Magical Old
Black Woman and the touching, inspirational lessons she teaches her
young white lady friend. (Guess which one is the main character!)
There are a couple of authors who use Hot Topic–style goth
novelty to sway cults of readers into thinking they’re the shit, but
really: Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves is The Blair
Witch Project combined with the staggering literary force of a
word-processing “draw on” feature. And Chuck Palahniuk’s first three
novels were fun, but everything since is Generic Palahniuk Product, a
lackluster rehash of the first three.
Maybe it’s optimistic to believe that douchebags can be saved from
themselves, but it’s heartening to think that dissuading someone from
buying their significant other a copy of Griffin & Sabine will save them both from a few years of gooey, melodramatic
precociousness. Luckily, it’s easy to find good books. Virtually
anything published by the New York Review of Books or Dalkey Archive is
amazing, and many of those books can be as life changing (in a good
way) as, say, Still Life with Woodpecker (which is life
changing in an obnoxious, masturbatory know-it-all hippie way). I know
my life changed the day I started reading Stanley Elkin, and
I’m not an asshole. Jesus fucking Christ! Are you reading
Siddhartha now? I give up! 