Thom Vernon's Reading List, 2000-2010

I am one of those jerks who survey other people's bookshelves. I do my best to get sight of a pattern or a trail: Books for Dummies, Nietzsche, the Bible. I spy for social comfort and to discover common ground. Books hold our private and public intellectual bodies. They are the infrastructure of our lives.
In 2000, I realized that I had quite a passionate reading history behind me but could not remember, except a title or author here and there, what I'd read or what I'd thought while reading. After that, whether I liked a book or not, each went on a growing list. That list, ten years long and greatly abridged, is below. I have tried to leave in the absolutely seminal books.

2000
Sex & The Law, Gore Vidal (essays)
Vidal, who I had the pleasure of meeting once, is a well I come back to over and over.

Hidden From History, Martin Duberman
Duberman is now the good-looking grandfather of queer history.

2001
The Willow Tree, Hubert Selby Jr.
I think this is the first book I read of Cubby's but, of course, I saw the film version of Last Exit to Brooklyn in the '80s. It was shocking to place those visions in the shrunken body that faced me Thursdays in workshop. Cubby taught me so much, mainly by drawing my attention to the little glimmers of my own voice showing up here and there.

Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr.

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor
I had worked on various O'Connor stories when training as an actor. But as my partner's and my immigration journey heated up, the misfits, freaks and outcasts of her work made us feel quite normal.

2002
Sarah, J.T. Leroy
Cubby had gotten the galleys of Sarah to give a cover quote. He was quite fond of the book, as was I. I was in Paris, at Les Mots et Les Bouches, when J.T. gave an ever-so hushed and soft-spoken reading there. Large, wide-brimmed black hat, cloaked head to toe in lace and black cloth like Stevie Nicks, albino-white hair, and enormous sunglasses (at night) were what faced me when I knelt just to the side of this new master to share my admiration and how Cubby had touted the book. He whispered, 'Oh, really? Thank you for telling me.' J.T., of course, was a great literary hoax. The fraud doesn't destroy the writing.

History of Sexuality, Part 1, 2, 3, Michel Foucault

The Sound and The Fury, William Faulkner

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Flannery O'Connor

Madness & Civilization, Michel Foucault

2003
The Habit of Being: The Letters of Flannery O'Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald
In this book, I heard the voice of a spirit that was sympatico, but quite different than my own. I recognized her experiences in the South. They are familiar. Her humour is devastating. A hero.

Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby, Jr.
Unflinching in his defense of the reader's right to an authentic experience, equipped with addictions and one worn lung, his generosity had no bounds.

Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankel

South of No North, Charles Bukowski
Nasty, dirty, rude, grotesque; full of devils fucking housewives and sex buddies having it off in elevators. I adore him.

2004
Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Gore Vidal
Americans have got themselves in a very difficult spot. Vidal lays it out for us.

2005
The Room, Hubert Selby Jr.

Song of the Silent Snow, Cubby Selby

A Mencken Chrestomathy, H.L. Mencken (essays)
The early-twentieth century's Arianna Huffington

The Orchard Keeper, Cormac McCarthy

2006
Lives of Girls and Women, etc., Alice Munro
This year, I went whole-hog on Munro.

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

From the Atelier Tovar: Selected Writings, Guy Maddin

Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt
Precise, clear and devastating.

2007
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 1, 2, 3 ed. Howard Eiland, Michael Jennings
Always provocative, always inspiring. We are the messiahs we have been dreaming of.

The Red & the Black, Krister Stendahl
A self-deceiving free-thinker pursued.

I and Thou, Martin Buber

2008
Elijah of Buxton, Christopher Paul Curtis
Elijah reminds me of Vive La Casa, a Buffalo group that serves as a stop on the contemporary underground railroad for haven-seekers negotiating border crossings. They saved my partner and I.

Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde

Swann's Way, Marcel Proust
Proust and Cubby have a lot in common.

In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust

Troubled, RM Vaughan
I kept seeing RM's name and reading little pieces by and about him after moving to Toronto in 2006. Then I read Troubled and was cold-cocked. I suspect a sympatico soul.

Girls Fall Down, Maggie Helwig
Girls exposed me, a newcomer, to the heart of my new home.

The Guermantes Way, Marcel Proust

Stunt, Claudia Dey
Between Girls Fall Down, Troubled and Stunt, I knew that Coach House had to be the publishing home of The Drifts.

Samuel Johnson Is Indignant , Lydia Davis
Davis peels the skin off what it is to tell a story.

Nobody Passes, Mattilda Shepard, ed.

2009
Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag

Swimming in the Sea of Death, David Reiff

Roots of Empathy, Mary Gordon
If Gordon is not a Toronto hero, than who is?

The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin
Astounding, astounding. Enormous.

2010
Lit, Mary Karr
Excruciatingly good.

Sodom & Gomorrah, Marcel Proust

Brother Dumb, Sky Gilbert

DeNiro's Game, Rawi Hage
When I was graduating from high school in 1982, we all presumed that we'd end up fighting in Beirut: in the locker room I remember all of us poking each other with goodbye's of 'See you in Beirut.' As Bilal gets closer to freedom, the rat-a-tat-tat language becomes more and more languid or poetic with strict control.

The Men Who Killed Me, Sandra Chu & Samer Muscati