The Books That Changed My Life

About This Video

Transcript

I've been in a strange book reading dry spell since I finished reading

Moby Dick in 2019 and I thought I would talk about some mind-altering books I've read in the past.

Instead of five mind-altering books I'll do five eras of mind-altering books and the first era

will be high school. And in high school the two books that stick out are "The Catcher in the Rye"

because I had heard, it was so legendary, I'd heard all about it. I thought it was going to be this advanced, sophisticated you know Charles Dickens kind of "Great Expectations" thing that was

kind of hard to read, I couldn't really find what... And then it turned out to be

hilarious and very easy to read and I didn't know that the feelings that I identified with in that

book were something that could be universal enough to be in a high school book, high school required

reading book, for you know probably 50 years. I think that book came out - maybe it came

out in 1950. And then the second book would be "Walden" but when I read it I didn't care.

Reading it now, going back and reading it, I understand that "Walden" is sort of a prototype of

the way that Americans think. It's sort of a love letter to American individuality or the rugged

individual, as lived through the author. So that's the high school books. The second era: drug books.

My friend sam gave me "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" I was probably 16 or 17. And that just

launched me on this insatiable Hunter S. Thompson phase where I read everything. And two things about

his books that I found compelling was one the adventures that he was on and his craziness

in the adventures and two just the excellence of the prose. There's this book called "Hell's

Angels" that he wrote before "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" where he as a young man traveled with

the Hell's Angels. And there's another book by Tom Wolfe called "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

and there are chapters in both of those books that intersect because the authors

were at the same party and wrote about that same party in each of the books. So in "Hell's Angels"

Hunter Thompson writes about this party at Ken Kesey's ranch and in "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

Tom Wolfe writes about this party at Ken Kesey's ranch. Something about that was spectacular to me.

Also that these books were very significant in in the American culture. And they had remained

significant among people that I thought were really cool. These phases intersect and it's hard

to do this chronologically because the next phase is America now, I would say, the America now books.

Which I'm still reading but it started probably after September 11, 2001. As almost all of us

were I was just blindsided like what the hell is going on so I started reading books about

what's going on in America right now. One of them I discovered it was called "The Twilight of American

Culture" it was written in 2000. It was written by a man named Morris Berman and I just found it on

a shelf at a farm in Virginia. And it was a farm where Dolley Madison and James Madison had gone.

The water there was supposed to have healing properties. So anyway I found this book randomly. I just saw the title on a huge bookshelf. I brought it home. I read it. And

that book came out in 2000, it turns out this man Morris Berman had written a trilogy of these books.

And the second one was called "Dark Ages America" and that came out in 2005.

And then the third book in the trilogy was called "Why America Failed" and that came out in 2011. So

"The Twilight of American Culture" is right before September 11th, "Dark Ages America" is right after or

four years after September 11th and "Why America Failed" is right after the financial collapse.

America has not yet failed as far as I can see. But it's on some kind of decline and

I think that these come in cycles, these declines. I read this other book that

I've done a video about called "The Fourth Turning" that's by Neil Howe and William Strauss. And "The

Fourth Turning" explains very plainly why and how history repeats itself. That book kind of helps me

put the American now books into perspective. I mean there's so many of the... I've read dozens

of these books. There's a book called "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, I think is her name. There's many of these books and they're very, for me, they're very fun to read because

it explains all these phenomena that you just see in the news very quickly. And it also helps me sort of conceptualize what is this place that I'm living in.

There was also this book that came out, I believe it came out after September 11th, and it's called "The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner and this book sort of explained the relationship between

advertising, the news and fear. So the basic premise being that the news reports on terrifying things

and then advertising advertises things to make you less afraid of the world and it made me less

fearful. It's sort of like understanding how a magician does his tricks maybe, it had that kind

of effect on me. Oh this is just, this is just a money-making thing that these news people

and these advertisers are sort of in cahoots doing. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy.

It's just that horror sells well, things that you are afraid of you are going to watch the

news you're going to watch the news when they're covering planes flying into buildings in your

town because it's terrorizing and advertising pays for that news coverage. It's not any kind

of like well we're going to scare Americans and sell them stuff. No, it's just our human nature is such that we want to buy things when we're fearful in the hopes that the buying of the things

will assuage our fear. It's just sort of a, one of these landmark books for me that helped me

understand why I did things and why my fellows did certain things. And then we have the culture books.

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was an idea from one of our Patrons. Link in the description. And the culture books are kind of a

family of books that I go to now and then and they kind of make me feel good and they kind of make me

feel like I'm a part of something. And it also feels like the people who write these books kind

of feel about the world the way that I feel about the world. They make me want to be able to make

something that makes others feel the way that I feel when I read these things.

And I know that's a very vague way to talk about it. So there's these three

anthologies. The first one is called "The Outlaw Bible of American Essays." The second one is

called "The Outlaw Bible of American Literature" and the third one is called "The Outlaw Bible

of American Poetry." When I read a book I read it with a red pen and underline things and make notes.

And so I was glancing through some of the red ink in my "Outlaw Bible of American Essays" book

and it's just a collection of essays from you know a lot of my cultural heroes and I found a couple of notes in here that are exemplary of that connection that

I feel with some of these authors. And the first one it's this essay by Eileen Myles

called "Everyday Barf" and she talks about this movie called "Tarnation."

And the note I wrote is this, it says, "I forgot about tarnation.

I saw it with the artist. What was his name? I met him Jonathan, I met him in the green room

waiting to have my picture taken by Albert Watson from Interview magazine for the Superstars issue."

His name is Jonathan Caouette and he was the other iMovie filmmaker besides Casey and me.

He was the other one. Every year Interview magazine does a, I don't know if they still do it,

I hope they do, they do a crystal ball issue where they predict, they take a handful of

people and they say oh these are the people to watch in the future and we, Casey and I were in

this issue and in the waiting room waiting to get our pictures taken was this guy Jonathan Caouette. And so this is where, wow, I am in it. I'm in the culture now.

You know reading that is like oh my god, this isn't hunter thompson with the hell's angels in 1964 or whatever year that was, 68. This is Jonathan Caouette, you've met this man you've talked to this man.

And I don't know what to say about that. But it's one of the rewards for these for these, you know

lives that we live trying trying to make stuff. And another note I read, it was a Tennessee Williams

story called "The Catastrophe of Success." And the note that I wrote is this: "I read this

on 5.21.08, one week after meeting with Sue Naegle the head of programming at HBO with whom Casey

and I have our first television series. On a plane to Paris, then Nice, then Cannes where a film I'm in

has been selected for the director's fortnight. This is what it's like to take the stage at the Cannes film festival. Wow.

And the first sentence that is underlined from the book itself is,

"The cinderella story is our favorite national myth."

And the title of the story is "The Catastrophe of Success" and it's Tennessee Williams and it's about when the illusion

melts away. And then my friend wrote a book my friend Chloë wrote a book called "Edgewise."

And it was about this woman named Cookie Mueller. And Cookie Mueller was one of the actresses from the John Waters films and

it's as if Chloë was her reincarnation. And I just remember she was working on it forever and ever in Berlin and then she just,

it came out and she came to New York to do this book party and I got a copy of the book

and I read the book, I think I bought 10 copies or something, I read the book and it was magnificent.

And my friend had written it and she had written it because she had so connected with this woman

who lived a very difficult life. But she lived one of these truthful lives you know that was

very difficult and she moved to new york and she tried to make it and she eventually became a

writer and you know wrote for Esquire magazine and she's beloved, like universally beloved. I just

saw an Andy Warhol documentary where they showed maybe Jean-Michel Masquiat, a picture of like Andy

Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Herring like one of those 80s photographs, and Cookie Mueller is

in the photograph as well. And my friend wrote this book having never met this woman because she died of AIDS before, maybe before, you know when we were probably when we were little kids.

It's a fantastic book and Chloë invited me to shoot the party, the launch party

and John Waters was there and a lot of the remaining people from that gang

from that John Waters little gang came to this book and they hadn't seen each other in decades.

And Chloë brought them together and we all went to dinner in this amazing loft and it was

oh my god it was just it was just another one of those things about this life that is

it's one of the rewards, you know. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of us get into it in the

first place, this made, this curated community and I guess the book experience of that.

It was sublime. I mean what can I say. I also read this book called "Shop Class as Soul Craft" and that's where I got the phrase the spirited man from and that's the book that

sort of combines the bookworm with the gear head. You know my current task at hand is to sort of try to understand

what it means to be a spirited man and the the well is that book. And I hope this work that i'm doing now, making these videos

is a distillation of all of the books that I've read

mixed with all of the experiences that I've lived and I just hope to contribute a verse.

This week on the Patreon archival videos with directors commentary. On my Patreon right there. The link is right there.

People Referenced

Herman Melville, J.D. Salinger, Henry David Thoreau, Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Ken Kesey, Morris Berman, Neil Howe, William Strauss, Jane Mayer, Barry Glassner, Alan Kaufman, Chloe Griffin, Cookie Mueller, John Waters

Books Mentioned

• life-changing book (by Herman Melville)
• life-changing book (by J.D. Salinger)
• life-changing book (by Henry David Thoreau)
• life-changing book (by Hunter S. Thompson)
• life-changing book (by Hunter S. Thompson)
• life-changing book (by Tom Wolfe)
• life-changing book (by Morris Berman)
• life-changing book (by Morris Berman)
• life-changing book (by Morris Berman)
• life-changing book (by Neil Howe and William Strauss)
• life-changing book (by Jane Mayer)
• life-changing book (by Barry Glassner)
• life-changing book series (by Alan Kaufman (editor))
• life-changing book series (by Alan Kaufman (editor))
• life-changing book series (by Alan Kaufman (editor))
• book about Cookie Mueller, life-changing (by Chloe Griffin)
• essay referenced as deeply influential (by Tennessee Williams)
• life-changing book about manual work (by Matthew Crawford)

Films & Media Referenced

• Jonathan Caouette documentary referenced
• Andy Warhol's magazine referenced
• HBO series referenced in context of Sue Naegle
• film festival section referenced

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