“Slate asked journalists, cable-news personalities, novelists, Hollywood types, and other great thinkers a question: What’s the most influential book you read in college? What made you slam down your café au lait and set out to conquer the world?”
For NewMexiKen’s part, I didn’t drink café au lait or even coffee in college, but I think I might have set down my Orange Julius for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. At least I can remember reading Kesey’s book in college and not many others are coming to mind, though I did read some Tolstoy — in Russian. (Толстой to you).
I didn’t drink café au lait in college, either — it was either Jolt Cola or beer, but …
Promise you won’t laugh.
My book was was Stephen King’s Insomnia. In my defense, I ‘ve never been a huge King fan, but I did read The Shining, The Stand, and Insomnia.
Insomnia CHANGED me because of one simple concept: The Random and The Purpose. It made me start thinking about destiny and chaos, and it was the first time in my young life that I ever considered the fact that the two may function side by side, harmoniously and perhaps even by design, in the universe.
Not an entire book, per se, but Walter Pater’s “Conclusion” to his book on the Renaissance. I can quote at least the first paragraph to this day, 31 years later.
“The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, upon the human spirit is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation.” and “To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame is success in life.”
And of course, trite though it may be, Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”.
So sue me.
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces, in my freshman English class.
Seeing how the myth of the hero and his (or her) quest has played out across cultures and time gave me a big handle into understanding all literature, and human psychology in general. Then there was the opportunity to get reaquainted with the whole thing again, years later, with the wonderful Bill Moyers PBS series of interviews with Joseph Campbell.