Five Books That Made Me Who I Am

A few days ago I happened upon an excellent article by my dear friend and fellow writer Aldric Chen which set me thinking.

‘The Books on my Table Make Me Think About LifeBooks are wonderful because they make me think’

In Aldric's case he was talking about books that make him think. In my case I am going to talk about five books, amongst many too numerous to mention, that in the long distant past made me not only think, but also have helped to form my personal world and humanistic view.

The following books, apart from giving me endless hours of joyful discovery, have also played a very large part in developing my morale compass, my appreciation of literary art and my philosophical view of the world and some of the people who populate this planet.

King Lear by William Shakespeare

I know everybody who is a serious reader has their own personal favourite Shakespearian play and many will not agree with my choice. But please bear in mind, I am not making any judgement about which of the Bard's plays or other written work is his best. I am simply saying which had the most impact on me as a relatively young reader and English Literature student.

What struck me about King Lear was Shakespeare's observation of the human condition and the playing out of the folly of the manner of an old monarch wanting to divest himself of all that he possessed in terms of his regal power and material accoutrements, most specifically his lands and properties.

What ensues from Lear's over bearing munificence, his over generous benevolence towards his sychophantic, power hungry daughters Goneril and Regan (whose false flattery serves merely to seize the power they so desperately desire) is an implosion of relationships between family, court allegiances and life long friends.

Lear disenfranchises the only truly faithful allies he has including his only daughter, Cordelia, in favour of his arse licking daughters Goneril and Regan.

It all ends in tragically disastrous circumstances with the foolish Lear and innocent Cordelia dead amongst many others.

In my own personal life I have had to live through exactly this type of family disfuncionality upon the later years and ultimate passing of my mother. It is a sobering thought that three of the villainous players in this forago of an implosion also ultimately resulted in the premature deaths of at least three of my own family members. In each case it was put down to 'natural causes', but I am convinced that some sort of karma was at play here.

Ultimately what I gained from reading and studying King Lear was an insight into how these type of situations play themselves out. It is a pity my disenfranchised siblings didn't get the same opportunities I did to study classical literature.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket

I have to say that the very first thing that impressed me was the fact that genius Becket, an Irish man through and through, wrote this play in French. To write anything noteworthy in a second language is not the easiest of tasks. To write a beautiful work of art that quite deservedly sits comfortably amongst the giants of modern twentieth century literature is nothing less than truly amazing.

Becket was an existentialist writer and gave the world a wonderfully accessible treatise on the existentialist modus operandi. So accessible in fact that it is said that the death row inmates of San Quentin jail were the first to get its point.

The play, in general, is about how life is simply a waiting game, a game in which we have to wait to discover whether we shall be saved or we shall be damned. This is not unlike a condemned inmate waiting to see if a plea for a pardon will succeed or if he will finally have to ride the lightning by taking a seat on old Sparky. Everything we do in the meantime is merely a distraction from having to consider the unthinkable. That is the human condition.

I personally find as I approach old age, ahem, that I am increasingly inclined to Becket's philosophical point of view. I take each day as it comes. All time is relative. Fifty years ago seems like yesterday, tomorrow never comes, why are we cursed with our infernal preoccupation with time? Everything we do, and I mean everything, is simply a distraction to ease our suffering of not knowing anything despite what we try to convince ourselves that we know it all.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressell (Noonan).

It has been said that this book is what helped the United Kingdom Labour Party to win the immediate post WWII elections. It is certainly a book that opened my uneducated eyes way back in 1977.

First published in 1914, three years after the writer's death from tuberculosis The book is about a group of painter and decorators, one of whom is a character called Own

George Orwell, no less, once said that it was a book that everybody should read. As of 2003 a million copies have been sold and it has been translated into a wide variety of other languages.

The book is explicitly political and is highly regarded as a classic of modern working class literature. The story revolves around the main character Frank Owen who frustratedly tried to educate his fellow workers about how the Capitalist system works very much against their health and well-being and very much in favour of the Capitalist.

"Clearly frustrated at the refusal of his contemporaries to recognise the inequity and iniquity of society, Tressell’s cast of hypocritical Christians, exploitative capitalists and corrupt councillors provide a backdrop for his main target: the workers who think that a better life is “not for the likes of them”. Hence the title of the book; Tressell paints the workers as “philanthropists” who throw themselves into back-breaking work for poverty wages to generate profit for their masters.

One of the characters, Frank Owen, is a socialist who tries to convince his fellow workers that capitalism is the real source of the poverty he sees all around him, but their education has trained them to distrust their own thoughts and to rely on those of their “betters”. Much of the book consists of conversations between Owen and the others, or more often of lectures by Owen in the face of their jeering; this was presumably based on Tressell’s own experiences." Wikipedia

I have to say this was my very first easy to understand explanation of how the system of governance in Capitalist countries like the United Kingdom works. More to the point, it offers an alternative solution to the grave injustices visited upon the working classes the world over. It is, despite me having been a capitalistic business owner, what makes me give my vote to socialism. It is my moral compass as to what is fair and just in how we choose to run our lives. It is what made me socioally-politically aware.

The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico

Here is a book that really touched me very, very deeply inside of my heart. I'll warn you now, it is a real tearjerker. It is a beautiful short story, or rather a novella, about the relationship between a lovely young girl, a socially reclusive hump back artist and a snow goose.

It is a soft and gentle tale full of tenderness, empathy and Dunkerkian heroics in equal measure. What touched me so much was how a man who had the misfortune to be physically deformed had a darn sight more heart for his fellow man than they ever had for him.

Quite often in life we shy away from physically deformed people, as if there is something intrinsically bad about such people. Perhaps it is the perceived ugliness of their deformity which informs our presumptions about such people. I suppose cinematic portals of Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notredame, doesn't help. Whatever. Should you endeavour to read this heart wrenching story be sure to have a box of Kleenex handy.

Collected Poems by Ted Hughes

Despite the personal traumas of the Hughes family and the the role Ted Hughes allegedly played in the suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath, the man still rates of one of our greatest modern poets.

In his early days Hughes gained fame and fortune with the publication of his book 'Hawk in the rain'. What followed was a series of collections of animal poetry which are absolutely sublime in my humble opinion. They are poems that helped to set me off on the path of writing poetry which to be honest I had as a very young child already experimented with a little.

There are many fine poems in these collections with wonderful insights into the lives of all manner of animals. However, for me, as well as a great many others, is the poem 'The Thought Fox.' The poem is in fact an extended metaphor to explain the process by which Hughes finds his creative muse. The fox in question is a poem, and the poem is a fox. How cool is that?

What is truly stunning is the linguistic description off the fox as it moves from deep within the forrest into Hughes' mind and right onto the page. Believe me there is no better a description of how a fox moves or how a poem is written. And of course, the self same metaphor works as well for a piece of creative prose as it does for a poem. I have personally tried to explain the creative process, sadly all in vain compared to this pure work of literary art.

And so here I am at the end of this piece, and just as Hughes explains at the end of his poem, all I can say is;

"The window is starless still, the clock ticks,The page is printed."

Copyright by Faber and Faber.2003