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

[sibyline]

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

Comments

[toddius]

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 seriously if they were written by a bearded guy in dry prose. I had read a Pynchon novel in high school, Vineland, but was seduced by the ninjettes and dope jokes and really wasn't at all aware of an political or social commentary. It also made me want to write my own fiction, the sensibility of the prose being so natural to me, so much like the way I wrote. Needless to say, I had no inkling at the time that it was such a cliche to like Pynchon so much.

[sibyline]

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.

[toddius]

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?

[sibyline]

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.

[toddius]

what sucks about my engagement with philosophy/theory nowadays is that it's safely in the past. Despite of having a large and impressive collection of texts, I can only discuss such things on a tyro level if at all. I mean, I sort of don't care anymore, but sometimes there would be an advantage in sounding smart.