What David Bowie Read (Or: 100 Ways to Make Yourself More Creative)
And if not more creative, at least a hell of a lot more interesting...
This week is both David Bowie’s birthday (Jan. 8th) and the seventh anniversary of his death (Jan. 10th, 2016). The rock star was a massive influence on how I think about art and, specifically, create today - so much so that a Ziggy Stardust-like character plays a major role in my debut novel PSALMS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD (2022). You can read more about his influence on me and the lessons all artists should take from his career here (“Be Like Bowie…or Die Trying”).
What isn’t as widely discussed as Bowie’s musical appetites are his literary ones. The man was a voracious reader with extraordinary taste. In this 5AM StoryTalk bonus resource, I share with you a list of his 100 must-read books. Bear in mind that Bowie didn’t just read these books. His music was quite often shaped by his experience of them, one example being his album DIAMOND DOGS, which is entirely written in William S. Burroughs’ cut-up method.
INTERVIEWS WITH FRANCIS BACON by David Sylvester
BILLY LIAR by Keith Waterhouse
ROOM AT THE TOP by John Braine
ON HAVING NO HEAD by Douglass Harding
KAFKA WAS THE RAGE by Anatole Broyard
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
CITY OF NIGHT by John Rechy
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO by Junot Diaz
MADAME BOVARY by Gustave Flaubert
ILIAD by Homer
AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
TADANORI YOKOO by Tadanori Yokoo
BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ by Alfred Döblin
INSIDE THE WHALE AND OTHER ESSAYS by George Orwell
MR. NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS by Christopher Isherwood
HALLS DICTIONARY OF SUBJECTS AND SYMBOLS IN ART by James A. Hall
DAVID BOMBERG by Richard Cork
BLAST by Wyndham Lewis
PASSING by Nella Larson
BEYOND THE BRILLO BOX by Arthur C. Danto
THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND by Julian Jaynes
IN BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE by George Steiner
HAWKSMOOR by Peter Ackroyd
THE DIVIDED SELF by R. D. Laing
THE STRANGER by Albert Camus
INFANTS OF THE SPRING by Wallace Thurman
THE QUEST FOR CHRISTA T by Christa Wolf
THE SONGLINES by Bruce Chatwin
NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS by Angela Carter
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by Mikhail Bulgakov
THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
HERZOG by Saul Bellow
PUCKOON by Spike Milligan
BLACK BOY by Richard Wright
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA by Yukio Mishima
DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
THE WASTE LAND by T.S. Eliot
MCTEAGUE by Frank Norris
MONEY by Martin Amis
THE OUTSIDER by Colin Wilson
STRANGE PEOPLE by Frank Edwards
ENGLISH JOURNEY by J.B. Priestley
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
AWOPBOPALOOBOP ALOPBAMBOOM: THE GOLDEN AGE OF ROCK by Nik Cohn
MYSTERY TRAIN by Greil Marcus
BEANO (comic, ’50s)
RAW (comic, ’80s)
WHITE NOISE by Don DeLillo
SWEET SOUL MUSIC: RHYTHM AND BLUES AND THE SOUTHERN DREAM OF FREEDOM by Peter Guralnick
SILENCE: LECTURES AND WRITING by John Cage
WRITERS AT WORK: THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS EDITED BY Malcolm Cowley
THE SOUND OF THE CITY: THE RISE OF ROCK AND ROLL by Charlie Gillet
OCTOBRIANA AND THE RUSSIAN UNDERGROUND by Peter Sadecky
THE STREET by Ann Petry
WONDER BOYS by Michael Chabon
LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Howard Zinn
THE AGE OF AMERICAN UNREASON by Susan Jacoby
METROPOLITAN LIFE by Fran Lebowitz
THE COAST OF UTOPIA by Tom Stoppard
THE BRIDGE by Hart Crane
ALL THE EMPEROR’S HORSES by David Kidd
FINGERSMITH by Sarah Waters
EARTHLY POWERS by Anthony Burgess
THE 42ND PARALLEL by John Dos Passos
TALES OF BEATNIK GLORY by Ed Sanders
THE BIRD ARTIST by Howard Norman
NOWHERE TO RUN THE STORY OF SOUL MUSIC by Gerri Hirshey
BEFORE THE DELUGE by Otto Friedrich
SEXUAL PERSONAE: ART AND DECADENCE FROM NEFERTITI TO EMILY DICKINSON by Camille Paglia
THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH by Jessica Mitford
IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER by D.H. Lawrence
TEENAGE by Jon Savage
VILE BODIES by Evelyn Waugh
THE HIDDEN PERSUADERS by Vance Packard
THE FIRE NEXT TIME by James Baldwin
VIZ (comic, early ’80s)
PRIVATE EYE (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
SELECTED POEMS by Frank O’Hara
THE TRIAL OF HENRY KISSINGER by Christopher Hitchens
FLAUBERT’S PARROT by Julian Barnes
MALDOROR by Comte de Lautréamont
ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
MR. WILSON’S CABINET OF WONDER by Lawrence Weschler
ZANONI by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
TRANSCENDENTAL MAGIC, ITS DOCTRINE AND RITUAL by Eliphas Lévi
THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels
THE LEOPARD by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
INFERNO by Dante Alighieri
A GRAVE FOR A DOLPHIN by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
THE INSULT by Rupert Thomson
IN BETWEEN THE SHEETS by Ian McEwan
A PEOPLE’S TRAGEDY by Orlando Figes
JOURNEY INTO THE WHIRLWIND by Eugenia Ginzburg
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I write about my 1976 trans-Atlantic voyage with David Bowie in my second book, The Ascension Within. When we weren’t playing music together in the Lido Bar, or eating salmon and eggs on the floor of his cabin suite, I would find him (sitting with his secretary, Coco) on the aft deck reading William Blake. Just one more of his many literary influences.
Well, this is a list I’ll be returning to. Thank you!