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lalalapi · 08-11-2003, 10:53 PM

My top five:

Yuko Mishima | Spring Snow
This alone justifies those years of Japanese lessons. I have yet to witness prose this breathtaking, or such unfettered melancholy.
James Joyce | Ulysses
Perversely decadent, aesthetically sublime, this love song to the English language is quite possibly the perfect Homeric ballad.
William S. Burroughs | Naked Lunch
If Mishima is the first to successfully stretch a fleeting moment infinitely and Joyce one of the few to nihilate such in a dream, Burroughs provides for an amalgam of the two. Here I find everything I love from Kesey, Heller, and Kerouac as well as all the worthwhile writers of the tumultuous century.
Erwin Schrödinger | What is Life?
Though it was his cat that made me fall in love with physics, it was this ditty that awoke me to the greater universal problem.
Ovid | The Metamorphoses
The fifth choice fell to this, Hamlet, or King Solomon's Mines. This once, I suppose, the Bard and H. Rider Haggard can step aside in reverence to their muse, and I'll just ignore Virgil.

..and a special sixth selection:
J.K. Rowling | The Harry Potter series
Devouring and regurgitating these novels, I will always be reminded of an exchange from the film Finding Forrester in which the reclusive author defends his literary and reportorial palettes. Asked why he wastes time reading the National Enquirer, when a guy like him "should be reading The New York Times or something like that," Forrester retorts that he does "read the the Times for dinner, but this, this is my dessert." So be it with Potter.

08-11-2003, 10:53 PM	#30 (permalink)
lalalapi Crazy	My top five: Yuko Mishima \| *Spring Snow* This alone justifies those years of Japanese lessons. I have yet to witness prose this breathtaking, or such unfettered melancholy. James Joyce \| *Ulysses* Perversely decadent, aesthetically sublime, this love song to the English language is quite possibly the perfect Homeric ballad. William S. Burroughs \| *Naked Lunch* If Mishima is the first to successfully stretch a fleeting moment infinitely and Joyce one of the few to nihilate such in a dream, Burroughs provides for an amalgam of the two. Here I find everything I love from Kesey, Heller, and Kerouac as well as all the worthwhile writers of the tumultuous century. Erwin Schrödinger \| *What is Life?* Though it was his cat that made me fall in love with physics, it was this ditty that awoke me to the greater universal problem. Ovid \| *The Metamorphoses* The fifth choice fell to this, <i>Hamlet</i>, or <i>King Solomon's Mines</i>. This once, I suppose, the Bard and H. Rider Haggard can step aside in reverence to their muse, and I'll just ignore Virgil. ..and a special sixth selection: J.K. Rowling \| The *Harry Potter* series Devouring and regurgitating these novels, I will always be reminded of an exchange from the film <i>Finding Forrester</i> in which the reclusive author defends his literary and reportorial palettes. Asked why he wastes time reading the National Enquirer, when a guy like him "should be reading The New York Times or something like that," Forrester retorts that he does "read the the Times for dinner, but this, this is my dessert." So be it with Potter.