The Fifteen Authors was a Facebook meme that appeared in October 2010.
The invitation guidelines: “Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.”
These (in alphabetical order) were the 15 I chose, although not necessarily the first 15 and not necessarily within 15 minutes. I have included a quotation from each – these were put up daily as Facebook status posts during the last two weeks of October. Some comments follow.
Margaret Atwood (1939- )
"You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
an open eye"
-- “You fit into me”
Comment: Atwood’s The Animals In This Country, from which this is taken, was the first collection of poems I read, and opened my eyes to contemporary poetry.
Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)
“I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet.” – Out of Africa
Comment: Evocative and beautiful, this is the one to beat as far as memoirs go.
Walter Burkert (1931- )
"It's not so much the limits of our knowledge as the superabundance of what can be known that makes an attempt to explain man's religious behaviour an almost hopeless enterprise." -- Homo Necans
Comment: The quotation is from Homo Necans, but it was his book The Lore and Science of Ancient Pythagoreanism that gave me a sense of what good historical scholarship looks like.
Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933)
"And greater honour is due them
When they foresee (and many foresee)
That Ephialtis will show up in the end
And that the Medes at last will come crashing in."
-- “Thermopylae”
Comment: The work of this Greek poet living in Alexandria, with its sad nostalgia combined with moral courage and defiance, is lastingly resonant.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
"I never saw any of them again -- except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them.” -- The Long Goodbye
Comment: Chandler is the master of the detective story as quest, with Philip Marlowe the knight errant.
Noam Chomsky (1928- )
“The propaganda model does not assert that the media parrot the line of the current state managers in the manner of a totalitarian regime; rather, that the media reflect the consensus of powerful elites of the state-corporate nexus generally.” – Necessary Illusions
Comment: Intellectually fearless, Chomsky provides incisive analysis of the contemporary political/ideological scene, and is scrupulous about sources. In holding up to scrutiny the version of events put forward by the political authorities and the mainstream media he performs a vital function.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881)
"And indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better -- cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?" -- Notes From Underground
Comment: Notes From Underground, my introduction to Dostoyevsky, first gave me the real sense I was dealing with Great Literature – deep, difficult and riveting.
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
"Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained." – “A Study in Scarlet”
Comment: Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories left me with a feeling for the wide variety of life, in London and beyond, although in many of them Watson and Holmes don’t stray far from their lodgings at 221B Baker Street.
Norbert Elias (1897-1990)
“The concept of civilité acquired its meaning for western society at a time when knightly society and the unity of the Catholic church were disintegrating.” – The Civilizing Process
Comment: A substantial scholarly work, Elias’ Civilizing Process fascinated me with its detailed demonstration that much of the social behaviour we take as given and fixed is actually the result of a long process of development.
Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932)
"‘Heard the news?’ he said. ‘There's nothing else being talked about, all along the river bank. Toad went up to Town by an early train this morning. And he has ordered a large and very expensive motor-car.'" -- The Wind in the Willows
Comment: My favourite book for young people (although I’m also awed by Alice in Wonderland). Along with the story, I love the illustrations of E.H.Sheppard.
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
“At the lake shore there was another rowboat drawn up. The two Indians stood waiting. Nick and his father got in the stern of the boat and the Indians shoved off and one of them got in to row.” – “Indian Camp”
Comment: Hemingway was a master of narrative. This quotation is particularly striking in context, because these are the first two lines of the story, collected in The Nick Adams Stories.
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
"We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move. And we moved!" – On The Road
Comment: No one has better portrayed the exhilaration of heading out on the road and going just to go. I responded to Kerouac’s sympathy for the underdogs and marginalized.
Kate Millet (1934- )
"Sexual politics obtains consent through the 'socialisation' of both sexes to basic patriarchal polities with regard to temperament, role, and status. As to status, a pervasive assent to the prejudice of male superiority guarantees superior status in the male, inferior in the female." -- Sexual Politics
Comment: I was wowed by the clarity and strength of Millet’s arguments in this major work of feminism, although I had major differences with her political approach and think many of her later notions nonsensical.
Sei Shonagon (c. 966-1017)
"In the winter, when it is very cold and one lies buried under the bedcovers listening to one's lover's endearments, it is delightful to hear the booming of a temple gong, which seems to come from the bottom of a deep well." -- The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Comment: Sei Shonagon was a court lady in Japan of the Heian Period, distant in all respects. But although the topics are often “exotic,” her vivid pillow book, or journal, reveals a personality by no means alien – an elegant reminder of how much we all share throughout history.
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)
“The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to this concept, means a revolution which makes no compromise with any single form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against reaction from without…” – Permanent Revolution
Comment: Trotsky’s thought has provided a valuable frame of reference for understanding the world.
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