What's the most influential book you read in college?

Nov 15, 2005 11:52

That's what Slate asked a number of influential people in this article. What's your answer?

Mine would have to be Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, which exposed me to a much broader range of possibilities in fiction that I had before. I hated it the first time I read it. I thought it was pretentious and unnecessarily difficult. But on second ( Read more... )

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sibyline November 15 2005, 17:47:08 UTC
for my money i think "the waves" is harder than "jacob's room." i've read it twice and i still can't manage to um, penetrate it. i've read all her fiction except for "flush," the dog biography. she shares the distinction with barbara bush who wrote "millie's book," as authors who wrote books from the perspective of dogs.

Yeah, with Barthes, I suggest starting with Mythologies, which makes these really astute and funny observations about French life in the '70s. It's kinda equivalent to reading a Barthes short story collection.

No pressure with litfic. At this point, I'm just planting the seed and don't really care how long it takes for it to grow. So contribute over there at your own leisure. I just want to keep populating it so people would have stuff to think about when they visit.

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morganlight November 15 2005, 19:24:54 UTC
Hey, thanks for the add. I don't have it posted online, but I could email it to you if you like.

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sibyline November 15 2005, 19:50:02 UTC
sure. sibyline@livejournal.com.

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morganlight November 15 2005, 20:41:08 UTC
Or, perhaps better, do you have AIM?

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sibyline November 15 2005, 20:42:45 UTC
i do but am on very infrequently. you're welcome to add me to your list though when i do pop up. it's mandonlym.

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toddius November 15 2005, 19:31:55 UTC
I can't remember the title of the most influential book I read in college, or even the author. It was a Whitman's Sampler of critical theory, assigned during my Freshman year honors English course. Throughout the semester, we read chapters about New Historicism, psychological criticism, structuralism, feminism, whatever, along with some xeroxed original materials, and had to write papers using each method we studied. Doing that not only exposed me to a lot of different ways of looking at the world, but more importantly, instilled in me a skepticism, that for better or worse, prevented me from embarrassing myself with an overarching enthusiasm for one philosophy/ideal of theory.

To name a book by a title, I would say Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Assigned not in a Lit class but an intro to Political Theory seminar (also my Freshman year), reading this following more canonical poli sci faves like Locke or Hobbes or Mill or Marx was a body blow to my sensibilities. Here was proof that ideas weren't only to be taken ( ... )

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sibyline November 15 2005, 19:55:59 UTC
yeah, political philosophy was also a big influence for me, especially "leviathan" and "the second treatise of government." i also took a survey literary theory class, but after the "topics in gay male representation" class, at which point i was already too far gone in the deconstructionist direction.

dude, what's up with you? i called your cell on friday and you never called me back. i'm happy just maintaining contact on lj, but we did talk about going to the whitney.

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toddius November 15 2005, 20:04:37 UTC
to make a lazy story short, I had turned my phone off on Friday because I had the day off and was afraid my boss was going to call. When I picked up your message, it was 6pm and I had actually just returned from Manhattan (I went to the Frick and Neue Gallerie) and wasn't in the mood to go back. I was thinking about calling you re:MoMA on saturday, but I was museum'd out at that point...anyway, I'm a jerk. How was the Whitney?

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sibyline November 15 2005, 20:18:40 UTC
i didn't go... i work two blocks away so i can always go, and therefore i never do.

oh, and i hope you don't mind, but i'm going to use this episode to ask what people's etiquette thresholds are, because i myself am slightly unclear about it. if you do mind i'll just do a friends-only post and filter you out, so you i can either talk about you in front of you or behind your back.

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mintstains November 15 2005, 23:04:03 UTC
easy:
A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch.
I picked it up Senior year because the 20th century brit lit class read it, and I was enthralled to the point of rewiring the electrical to get a light in my closet and locking myself in.
It convinced me to break up with my girlfriend.
I've since read 15 or so Iris books, and that one 5 times

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sibyline November 16 2005, 02:14:11 UTC
yeah, wow, i love "a severed head." that and "the black prince." the only other one i've read is "the sea, the sea," which i didn't like as much. among the other ones, which ones are you favorites?

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mintstains November 16 2005, 06:14:00 UTC
the three most memorable beyond the two you mentioned:
"the green knight"
"message to the planet", i actually didn't like reading this one at all, but it has been the one that I think of most often, so it is really great.
"the sacred and profane love machine" beyond having a brilliant title this one was fun.

i love how Iris can sum up people's conflicting emotions so quickly. the characters almost always have conflicting emotions, which is wonderful because emotions are never simple.

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jcruelty November 16 2005, 01:51:42 UTC
Some books that stayed with me:

Animal Liberation by Peter Singer- led to me being vegetarian for 6 years, and I still find its basic arguments hard to refute.

The Language Instinct by Steve Pinker - best cog sci book I read, chapter that summarizes similarities across cultures is breathtaking

Intro to Algorithms by Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest: the bible. Stark beauty of this textbook convinced me to become a computer science major after I saw it on a friend's bookshelf. Cover by Alexander Calder still perfect.

Living High and Letting Die by Peter Unger - moral philosophy that will leave you feeling guilty years later. This book is why I give to oxfam every year, and why I know I don't give enough.

Mind of a Mnemonist by R. Luria - fascinating book about patient who had absolute recall; leads to all kinds of interesting observations about nature of memory

The Modernist City - this is how I learned about Brasilia and began to realize what precisely I hate about modern urbanism. actually I hated the way this book was written, ( ... )

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sibyline November 16 2005, 02:15:23 UTC
i worked in a lab down the hall from steve pinker, so i got treated to his shiny gray mane on an almost daily basis. :)

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