Who in this world has not been inspired by a piece of literature? You're inhuman if you haven't. I don't care if it was a novel forced upon you by your mother, begging you to un-glue your eyes from the TV, or your 5th grade schoolteacher reading aloud "Where the Red Fern Grows" during the half hour after recess. SOMETHING has hit you. Hopefully, a few works have hit you.
For me, there have been dozens and dozens of books, short stories, and works of poetry that have knocked me over the head like a sack of potatoes and at the time, I thought changed my world indefinitely. Perhaps their resonance hasn’t profoundly impacted my every day since reading them like they did at the time I turned the final page, but there is most certainly a component to each one of my favorite stories that will always last, however subtly, years after completion until age and a forgetful brain will require me to pick it up and read it again.
To read is to write and to write is to read. From the pool of my favorite authors and minds, I have come to notice that my elite picks are the ones who write as if I can hear them speaking to me directly, in their own voice, as if we were sitting face-to-face in a public area. They allow me to read their eyes, their innermost thoughts and secrets; not just their printed words on a page. There are three authors in particular I can say with assurance have allowed me to do that, and have remained the three strongest influences on my literary health since I was a teenager. They are three very different creators that have provided me with a certain tripod of balance and admiration, so that when I find myself shifting more towards one of the three than another, the remaining two rather quickly put me in check and bring me back to the center of my triangle so I may more fully enjoy the three minds that enable the form of thinking that make me feel the most content and at home. They include the Descriptor, the Genius, and the Badass, and I earnestly adore them all as if they were my family members. In a way they are. Allow me to present them to you, and you damn well better have read at least one sentence by each of them.
The Descriptor: John Steinbeck
The man is the god of imagery. I will confess, after reading all of his principle works from ‘Canary Row’ to ‘Travels with Charlie,’ it was a bit of a treacherous journey to get through ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ much like it was for the Joad family to navigate cross-country. However, one thing is more than accurate when describing the collection of the Steinbeck library: he…well…describes. Ridiculously well. To me, Hemingway has nothing on this ultimate California dude who provides an account of Salinas and it’s dichotomy of hills and valleys like no one ever has or will.
I read three of his novels while in high school (thank you, English teachers of good taste) and instantly attributed this guy as someone apart. What is it that he did for me? I’m sure you’ve been told before that your first taste of something sticks with you more than the others; not in the “first impressions” sense of the term, but the idea txhat say, the first ice cream flavor you try at a particular parlor will always be attached to you somehow and you always long for it, even just a little bit, every time you return and contemplate which flavor you’ll have a scoop of that visit. The first taste of Steinbeck for me was ‘East of Eden,’ which I was automatically weary of when I purchased it for class and saw the Oprah’s Book Club sticker in the bottom corner of the paperback cover. Proved me wrong. ‘EofE’ remains one of my favorite books I have ever read, and not even for the brilliant storyline spanning across the three generations of the Trask family. Rich in symbolism and biblical undertones that are impossible to miss, Steinbeck crafts each page like verse of poetry and it reads as easy fluid as a drink of water. The way he stresses the importance of the environment on man’s inner-nature is like an autobiography for the author himself; one’s surroundings is oneself, and there is no detachment between the two. Inside Steinbeck’s world, you can’t resist the truly curious feeling of a child, eager of American soils you have never set foot upon and desperate to experience.
If, you so shamefully, have never given yourself the gift of his work, I recommend starting with ‘Of Mice and Men.’ It will take you three days to read, and it is the perfect introduction into the mind of Steinbeck. I promise you will sympathize with the characters and feel as if you are exercising the same physical labor they endure. Imagery, colors, sights…Steinbeck gives them to you without the forced literary techniques you were demanded to include in your five-paragraph essays of grade school. He is the beautifully romantic corner of the triangle that allows me to truly feel.
The Genius: Ayn Rand
I cannot do this remarkable woman justice. As I have dubbed her ‘The Genius,’ she doesn't need me to demonstrate for her that she is a woman for all of mankind whose brilliance is just so damn overwhelming I can’t even sanely give her words through my earnest excitement. From her personal philosophy of “objectivism” to her astounding knowledge of railroads, mills, and architecture as if she was an expert in the fields, I look up to this woman in awe and complete praise. I don’t know how a Russian-born female author in the 1940s could have had so much courage to speak without fear of consequence or reception. I don’t have that courage now. I sure as hell don’t have a fraction of her intelligence, but I just know that she has given me some sort of relief and hope that as long as her word is still read, I will be comforted by her as some find comfort in looking up into the night sky.
I picked up ‘The Fountainhead’ two years ago during a winter that constituted five of the longest months of my young life. The story we have there is for another day, but what I can mention about it now is that I was saved, in part, by her paragraphs, her chapters, and the whole of that novel. That GREAT novel. I call it my second Bible, and one of the best gifts I have ever received was a beautiful hardcover copy of it for my twenty-first birthday. I have yet to open it out of fear that even I am to soiled for its touch.
Rand has done something for me with ‘The Fountainhead’ that I’m guessing doesn’t happen to just any person who works on a beach read: she has created a character who I fully idolize, respect, and love more than most human beings I have met. His name is Howard Roark. He is physically unattractive but stunning to the soul, and I truly envy the only woman who could ever gain his devotion. The heroine is, plain and simply, a lucky son of a bitch. But no need to digress in a jealous fit of spite against her. She too, is wonderful. But unlike her, Roark is able to transform the men who are bright enough to understand their ignorance compared to his and adopt it, or he sets fire to those who cannot see past the edge of conformity. He is an absolute, uncompromising hero, and it is his untouchable perfection of mind and body that one desperately wishes would exist outside of a storybook. I so wish it would. If you know Roark, you know what I’m talking about. If you know Rand, you know I have to be a little bit dramatic when on the topic of her art.
I feel like one huge hypocrite to say that I am only 445 pages into ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ and it is my first time cracking it open. Oops. I’ll stand by my case regardless: finishing the book will only be a reaffirmation of my claim to her, and my hope is that you will do yourself a favor, THE favor, by reading all 1,000+ pages of her works as well. Meet Roark. Meet Taggart (Dagny of course, not Jim). Get to know them and try to compare them to anyone you know. It’s impossible. Rand truly creates a brand new world.
The Badass: Anthony Bourdain
No, he is not the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature or the next in line to be knighted for overall greatness. But Tony, MY Tony, has inspired me to extreme proportions that might make some roll their eyes wondering where this oddball fits in with my triangle. Honestly, he has had the greatest impact on my desire to keep reading, writing, and most importantly, to write rawly. If you have ever seen an episode of ‘No Reservations’ or read ‘Kitchen Confidential,’ you know that there is something a little different about this cook who got on TV and wrote a couple of books for kicks. Perhaps I idolize him because he is a contemporary; a man who is actually living each day here in the now as I am, and thus, seems more tangible. Whatever the reason, I’ve just made my peace with knowing that he has been a reason. Period. A reason why I have taken print communication a little more seriously.
Bourdie is an arrogant little bastard, and he will be the first to acknowledge so. I don’t know whether or not it makes it more ‘okay’ to be a bastard, if you know that you are one, but I don’t really give a damn when it comes to Bourdain. The man is underestimated and easily pushed aside by frumpy older men like my father who credit him with nothing beyond a rich and privileged white boy. Besides being an exquisite foodie with a keen taste in liquor and most things illegal, Anthony can cook. He can cook well. I have no idea how he pushed through his early years as a temporary chef snorting X, Y, and Z drug while launching hundreds of orders of steak frites and foie gras out into dining room rotation. I envy the way his mind works. The words that come out of his mouth and the rapidity of his thoughts. They are pompous and always assumed to be right, but are never narrow-minded: the man has traveled the world, and has earnestly listened along the way. He is one of the few reasons I watch TV and when it comes to him, I am really watching. I’m enthralled. I want his life and more so than out of jealousy, I am appreciative of his job well done.
As a disclaimer, I am also not-so-oddly sexually attracted to his silver fox/rough n’ tough around the edges demeanor. I know a good many women who are as well. I learn to love a new thing about him each and every time he releases a statement. For instance, when asked what he has learned as a writer, he replied with, “Nothing.” Nothing. Who is that honest to deliver an answer that no one, yet everyone, wants to hear? Anthony Bourdain is a man with a mind, a manor, and a pallet who got damn lucky. Damn lucky to be one of the first who traveled and cooked and got noticed on the level we all are on (at least in our heads) at this time. Sigh.
I haven’t done one of these figures any kind of justice or proper praise. I’ve probably insulted them actually, just by blabbing about my love for them without a say in what is good or bad. Oh well: “you are what you love, not what loves you.” I’ll take that. They don’t have to agree.
D.C.
