Literature that changed your life?

Hard question to answer, dlowan, without getting overly personal. As best I can, here goes:

Fromm: I was a kid lucky to be involved in some work with Fromm at a time when he and some well known academics formed a group of discussion and protest re nuclear disarmament, military industrial complex, war as psychosis. Between working with them and reading Escape from Freedom (I was about 21-22) I got jogged out of political complacency, saw the US quite differently. (Saw Emerson quite differently as well.) Possibly left "pseudo-self" behind...? Detached from the American myth about America. The book seemed to be the kick in the butt I needed.

Durrell, Prokosch, Gregg, Handke: These were part of an ongoing revelation for me in my twenties and thirties. This is MUCH harder to explain. I wouldn't have begun to understand it had it not been for a luncheon conversation a few years ago with a 90-year-old, brilliant, humorous psychoanalyst (who'd been a colleague of Fromm's many years before). Referring to the period when I'd known Fromm and others in that group for whom analysis had been key in their intellectual development, I asked him if he would be able give me (over lunch!) an up-close and friendly glimpse of the analytic process. He responded kindly. He asked me for a question, any question, and I asked him how to figure out why I found maps, orientation, and physical geography so... exciting! important! vital! He took me through a process which revealed how a childhood experience led to the predominance of "sense of place" in my intellectual development and work as an artist. As I see now, it also explained how Gregg, Durrell and Prokosch had hooked me: they had opened up not just a new way of looking at the physical world but of inhabiting it consciously. The result for me was to move away from that earlier, dismissive, judgmental view of the world around us -- of landscape in which one mostly notices "a nice view" or "a place I wouldn't want to live." Those writers (and others) wrote about a physical world which is full of intellectual and visual content which is not necessarily under control. Handke I started reading maybe 15 years ago and he added connective tissue, influenced my painting quite directly. Later, Yehoshua was brain candy! So, in the same way, was Yi Fu Tuan -- but I don't think many people know his work. And Bachelard. And Schama.

Larry's response is very interesting and I think worthy of a separate discussion. Agree with Msolga.

Dlowan, the simple fact is that not all cultures and not all historical periods have known romantic love as we today in the West know it. So the question arises, where does this complex of feelings come from? Is it innate or a social construction?

Msolga--where do you now stand on romantic love? A complete skeptic?

Tartarin, very interesting. I shall come back and re-read after work, and comment.

larry, yes, I know, I was more or less agreeing with you.

Dlowan--It wasn't clear to me that you were agreeing. I thought you wanted me to amplify my answer.

No, Larry r, it's not my nature to be totally skeptical about anything (apart from the motives of politicians! ). No door is EVER 100% closed, almost no idea is ever totally excluded ... But where do I stand on romantic love? Hmmm, it has it's time & place & it is also EXTREMELY demanding & depleting of one's personal resources. And I hate the idea of of my actions being influenced by illusions & delusions, which seem to be so much a part of the experience. Right now I am in *recovery mode* ... From a long, long, involved episode by the best means: rediscovering one's self as a solitary person again. Not an easy process after years of the other sort of *merged* existence, but a very satisfying one, never-the-less.
The trouble with romantic love & merging one's life with another's is that you lose so much of yourself, you can so easily lose track of who YOU really are. Why does it seem to be just one thing or another? I envy people who are able to achieve this balance, but I haven't managed it very well, I'm afraid. I like the idea of being more sensible!

Sorry for the digression, Deb.
I agree with Tartarin, Larry .. why not start a thread? It's a fascinating topic. And one that you've obviously considered a great deal.
~

Every time I start a thread I get subjected to unwarranted abuse. So I think I'll pass on this opportunity. You can start one and I'll post on it!

larry r

Have you been hanging around the political threads, then?
Honestly, I can't imagine you'd receive any abuse on the thread about romantic love ... Why not do it?

Romantic love has been way over-valued in American (western?) culture. Not that it doesn't have value, but it isn't a sine qua non. Look at how we respond to celibates and hermits -- the absence of sexuality (even if just for a part of one's life) is seen to diminish the total "reality" of that life. (Living in a cave and feeling passionately about the Virgin Mary just doesn't quite cut it.) Now, not that I haven't been ecstatically, willingly entrapped by romantic love myself during the Hormone Decades, but then I learned that life fully lived (including eccentricities,cloistering, wildness, intellectual passion, independence, change of mind) is Life Fully Lived. Life romantically lived is.. life romantically lived. And a social construction to a large extent. As are (of course ) eccentricities, intellectuals passions, and, hey, even the Virgin Mary....!

LOL! Well said.

Siddartha changed my life. As a teen becoming a young adult and a couple more times in my early 20s I read it to get a grip on what is important in life and what isn't. It really calms my nerves and settles the mind-chaos.

Male chauvinist pig
I first read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan more than three decades ago, and its message certainly changed my view of the opposite sex, i. e., women.

Ms. Friedan's book was a pioneer work in the women's movement that was just coalescing at that time. She writes of lonely wifes in suburbia who have no real lives of their own, but instead live vicariously through the lives of their husbands. This concept was shocking to me because I had always thought most wives to be perfectly content to stay at home all day and await hubby's return from work. After all, wasn't that the Divine plan?

Well, now it seems silly for me to think the way I did as a young man. Had it not been for Ms. Friedan's landmark book, though, I might still be what was later known as a "male chauvinist pig." Her book caused me to look at the role of women in our society in a very different way.

Still now, I often think of her book. The only reason I read it was because it was a best-seller at the time, and I wanted to be au courant. Instead of a flippant "read," it was a book that I knew while reading it would cause me to change, for the better, my general impression of women. When I finished the book, I was not the same man I was when I started it.

Both very interesting books - Friedan certainly changed my life - as did Millett.

Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte

Fountain Head-Ayn Rand

Even Cowgirls get the blues-Tom Robbins

Lord of the Rings trilogy-we KNOW who wrote that!

Griffin & Sabine-Nick Bantock

Poems and other selected letters-Veronica Franko

Dead men do tell tales-William R. Maples, Ph. D.

When things fall apart "heart advice for difficult times-Perma Chodron (Buddhist)

The Road Less Traveled-Scott Peck

Oh boy, I could go on and on....hehe, sorry.

Well, do, and welcome, but with more detail of HOW they changed your life, if you please....

I seriously doubt that the Lord of the Rings trilogy changed anyone's life, not even Tolkien's.

A Generation of Vipers, Philip Wylie

I keep forgetting to mention Dostoevsky as the writer who has had the most profound influence on my life. The experience of reading THE POSSESSED and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV in high school changed my outlook forever. More recently, I encountered THE IDIOT, and was so bowled over by it that I read it twice in a year. Dostoevsky makes you see people and yourself in a new way--in depth, in all dimensions and contradictions. He is the supreme psychologist of the novel. Indeed, his only rival in literature is Shakespeare.

He is pretty damned fine at that - more on the HOW, if you can, Larry though.

Dys - very succinct - can you be more expansive?

I am SURE LOTR changed Tolkien's life!

If LOTR changed Tolkien's life it could only have been financially, not artistically. Certainly the books are not a great work of art which changed his or anyone else's life.

I thought I explained quite precisely how Dosteoevsky changed my life--he altered the way I see myself and other people deeply, and forever. He gave me new and permanent insight into what we call the human condition. I defy anyone of any sensitivity to read one of the great Dostoevsky novels and come out of the experience unchanged.

Not to get all existential on y'all, but I wonder if a definition of "changed your life" is called for? I mean, we are all always changing every second of every day. Some changes are larger, some changes are smaller. But my synapses are aligned incrementally different *now* than when I wrote the word "synapses." And one tiny butterfly-fluttering choice can have giant hurricane effects down the line; though, lacking a peephole into alternate universes, it is hard to know what the butterfly-to-hurricane choices are.

I think I understand what you mean by "changed your life", dlowan, but as I try to come up with an answer I keep getting stymied by degrees. "It changed me, to be sure, but did it change me enough?" I can think of very few things that I have read that didn't change me in some way.