The Iliad
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Inferno
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Zanoni
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Transcendental Magic:
Its Doctrine and Ritual
(OLSKDV/HYL ʥʬʩʨ
Madame Bovary
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Les Chants de Maldoror
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McTeague
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Blast
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ʥʭʥʨʥʩ
The Waste Land
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The Great Gatsby
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Lady Chatterley’s Lover
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Berlin Alexanderplatz
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Passing
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The ʲʰnd Parallel
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As I Lay Dying
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The Bridge
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Vile Bodies
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Infants of the Spring
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English Journey
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Mr Norris Changes Trains
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The Beano
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The Day of the Locust
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Darkness at Noon
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Inside the Whale
and Other Essays
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The Outsider (7KH6WUDQJHU)
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Black Boy
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The Street
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Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Lolita
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A Grave for a Dolphin
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The Outsider
&ROLQ:LOVRQ ʥʭʩʪThe Hidden Persuaders
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On the Road
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Room at the Top
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The Leopard
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Writers at Work: The Paris
Review Interviews, vol. ʯ
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Billy Liar
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All the Emperor’s Horses
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The Divided Self
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On Having No Head
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The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
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Private Eye
Magazine, ʯʷʴʯś
Silence: Lectures and Writing
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Strange People
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A Clockwork Orange
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The American Way of Death
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City of Night
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The Fire Next Time
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Puckoon
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The Sailor Who Fell from
Grace with the Sea
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Herzog
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Last Exit to Brooklyn
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In Cold Blood
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The Master and Margarita
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Journey Into the Whirlwind
(XJHQLD*LQ]EXUJ ʥʭʪʫ
The Quest for Christa T.
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Awopbopaloobop
Alopbamboom
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The Sound of the City: The
Rise of Rock and Roll
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In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some
Notes Towards the Redeɿni-
tion of Culture
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Octobriana and the Russian
Underground
3HWU6DGHFN¿ ʥʭʫʥ
Before the Deluge: A Portrait
of Berlin in the ʯʷʰʮs
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Dictionary of Subjects
and Symbols in Art
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Mystery Train: Images of
America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music
*UHLO0DUFXV ʥʭʫʩ
Tales of Beatnik Glory
(G6DQGHUV ʥʭʫʩ
The Origins of Conscious-
ness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind
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In Between the Sheets
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The Gnostic Gospels
(ODLQH3DJHOV ʥʭʫʭ
Viz
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A Confederacy of Dunces
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Earthly Powers
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A People’s History of
the United States
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Flaubert’s Parrot
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The Life and Times
of Little Richard
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Money
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Nights at the Circus
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Nowhere to Run:
The Story of Soul Music
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Hawksmoor
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White Noise
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Raw
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Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm
and Blues and the Southern
Dream of Freedom
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The Brutality of Fact: Inter-
views with Francis Bacon
'DYLG6\OYHVWHU ʥʭʬʫ
The Songlines
%UXFH&KDWZLQ ʥʭʬʫ
David Bomberg
5LFKDUG&RUN ʥʭʬʬ
Sexual Personae: Art and
Decadence from Nefertiti to
Emily Dickinson
&DPLOOH3DJOLD ʥʭʭʤ
Beyond the Brillo Box: The
Visual Arts in Post-Historical
Perspective
$UWKXU&'DQWR ʥʭʭʦ
Kaɻa Was the Rage
$QDWROH%UR\DUG ʥʭʭʧ
The Bird Artist
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Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet
of Wonder
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Wonder Boys
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The Insult
5XSHUW7KRPVRQ ʥʭʭʪ
A People’s Tragedy: The Rus-
sian Revolution ʯʶʷʯśʯʷʰʲ
2UODQGR)LJHV ʥʭʭʪ
Tadanori Yokoo
7DGDQRUL<RNRR ʥʭʭʫ
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
&KULVWRSKHU+LWFKHQV ʦʤʤʥ
The Coast of Utopia
7RP6WRSSDUG ʦʤʤʦ
Fingersmith
6DUDK:DWHUV ʦʤʤʦ
The Brief Wondrous Life
of Oscar Wao
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Teenage: The Creation
of Youth Culture
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The Age of American
Unreason
6XVDQ-DFRE\ ʦʤʤʬ
Selected Poems
)UDQN2Š+DUD ʦʤʤʭWhy this book?
I’ve been a Bowie superfan since I was about 12. I wanted
to honor him with a book, and after his top 100 list
appeared, I thought it would be fun to tease out connec-
tions between the titles and Bowie’s life and work.What surprised you about meeting Bowie?
Is he different from his persona?
I expected him to be chillier and more aloof. What
surprised me most was how funny he was. For all the
seriousness with which he applied himself to being suc-
cessful, Bowie’s relationship to the world was essen-
tially comic. He was completely aware of the absurdity
at the heart of being a “rock star,” and there’s a lot more
humor in his work than many people realize.Did you know then that he was a voracious reader?
What did he share with you about the connection of
his music to literature?
I’d heard the stories about the portable library Bowie car-
ried around with him in the 1970s. It was obvious from
his work that he had a wider frame of reference than most
of his peers. He was promoting the +HDWKHQ album when
I met him [in 2002], and he did talk a little about Gnosti-
cism. But he didn’t speciɿcally reference Elaine Pagels’
book [from the list], or indeed any of the others.What is your favorite Bowie song?
Some days, it’s “Life On Mars?” for its sheer melodic
wondrousness. On others, it’s “Lazarus” for the way
it builds to that swirling ɿnale. As a lapsed Catholic,
though, I’ll go with “Word On A Wing.” “In this age
of grand illusion, you walked into my life out of my
dreams...” In the wrong hands it would be ridiculous,
but Bowie takes you on this extraordinary theological
journey; it’s a hymn, really—and you believe every word.Which book on the list do you connect with most?
Of the books on the list, around 15 are among my person-
al favorites; for example, 1LQHWHHQ(LJKW\)RXU1LJKWV$W7KH&LUFXV and 0DGDPH%RYDU. The book I connect with
most in terms of this project is Julian Barnes’ )ODXEHUWŠV
3DUURW. It’s not a novel so much as an extended meditation
on how much you can ever really know about an artist you
love; also on the way extreme fandom is sometimes a way
of displacing or deferring things you can’t (or don’t want
to) deal with in your own life. A key question Barnes asks
is how much we’re the sum of our trappings. Does seeing
the glass from which Flaubert took his last sip bring us
closer to him? Bowie spent a lot of time amassing and
conserving the relics of his career, so I think )ODXEHUWŠV
3DUURW may have been quite a personal book for him.DAVID
BOWIE’S
TOPʝ10 0
BOOKS
IN CHRONOLOGICAL
ORDERQ&A: John O’Connell
BY MEREDITH WOLF SCHIZER
BOOKSNOVEMBER 15, 2019 NEWSWEEK.COM 45